Month: December 2022

What the Boss Likes – back from a trip

Well, I’m back from my second psychonaut experience, courtesy of Yuggoth Pharmaceuticals.   My first was with salvia, and that was a brief perception of the world being made of “twizzlers”, aka thin strands of licorice.   And then nothing until I suddenly became aware again. 

This one was quite a bit different.  I can remember most of it.   A combination of the textures of puffed wheat and twigs, it was a bit of a task to ingest the fungi.  But with a cup of coffee, the couple of grams went down.  About an hour afterward, I could start to see rainbow patterns when I closed my eyes.  Then I could see a little trail of rainbow around most things that moved, including the kittens. 

The floor tile got my attention.  It is randomly brown, gray and white, an attempt to be stone-like.  I could see the colors shifting and then I suddenly could see skulls.  Thinking to myself that they weren’t scary, they took on the appearance of being the skulls of humanity’s ancestors, receding into the past. 

Now, during this, I could simply look away from the “vision” and everything was fine.  I was able to tend the sticky buns that were going to into the oven in a little while, feed the cats, etc.  I did find it funny since I could see the tiles moving rather like the one episode of “That 70’s Show” when Eric could see the wallpaper moving. It really does feel like that!

I decided to turn on the TV and went out to Netflix to watch a very nifty set of videos called Moving Art.  They are films of natural scenes, put to ambient music and artfully altered just enough to accentuate them e.g. slowing down the fall of rain, the crash of a wave, etc.

Watching these, I could feel the trip deepen, with time feeling slower and having an urge to giggle.  I also couldn’t look at anything in the video without seeing faces in it.   The cliff faces, the waves, the ripples, clouds, all were faces, often feminine or aged men, which was rather disconcerting, but when I looked away from the video, the living room was just fine.   

I then started seeing snakes/dragons/feathered serpents in the video, not threatening at all, just snakes but in a more than mundane way, much more seeing the ideal of “Snake”.   The video that was on a that time was a lovely fly over of Iceland, and the swirls of lava flows and streams gave a lot of fuel to those images.  I, being the myth soaked gal I am, of course thought of the midgard serpent, kundalini, the snake shedding its skin, etc. 

In amongst this, my husband took care of the sticky buns, and I had one, which was interesting since the caramelized sugar was a little too fascinating as a texture. 

Things became a little more disassociated, and I started to feel very cold. Right now, Pennsylvania is in the current artic cold that has been sweeping the US.  After wrapping myself up in various robes, afghans (the crocheted blanket) I just couldn’t get warm. I ended up in our bed, which has a heated mattress pad.  It seems I created my own personal little sweat lodge.  I don’t really remember any dreams, but woke up slowly with the thought that I didn’t need to borrow any ideas from any other culture than my own to have a mythos and I didn’t need to feel that I was always standing outside of everything, just observing.  My mythos for myself was enough, and if it included Bugs Bunny and jazz, that was just fine. 

After a long hot, and then cold, shower, I do feel much better than I’ve felt for a long time.  It does feel like this snake has shed her skin and can see things more clearly now.  What I find entirely too amusing is that I pulled a tarot card after all of this, and I got the knight of wands.  This can signify travel, adventure and coming back from a trip with more clarity.   I use the cards as a way to focus my thoughts but sometimes the universe seems to be just too interested in making things seem weird. 

So, take this as you will, from a hard atheist who is entirely too concretely minded. Did I see any “gods”? Nope, but it does seem to make your brain go places it generally wouldn’t otherwise.  I would recommend this experiment to most folks.  Do make sure you have a good minder around. 

now this is the kind of holiday tradition I think I’ll keep. 🙂

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – a big boondoggle in the “holy land”.

“

AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan has launched a $100 million master plan aimed at attracting 1 million Christian pilgrims to celebrations of the second millennium of the baptism of Jesus in 2030.

The ambitious plan was unveiled by a foundation created by the Jordanian government to develop the “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” area, on the east bank of the Jordan River, long venerated as the place of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. Archaeological discoveries of an ancient monastery at Al-Maghtas, Jordan, became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015.

Samir Murad, chair of the new foundation, said his group plans to provide Christians access to visit and worship at the site while respecting its integrity.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/12/15/jesus-baptism-site-jordan/

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – that talking ass

hmm, “write boldly” is on a Christian website that is afraid of allowing comments to appear with their nonsense.  I guess they can’t “defend” nonsense boldly.

this is doing to be a fun one.  Christians often don’t like when non-Christians make fun of how idiotic their bible is, and how much it is like any other set of myths from the bronze/iron ages.  

This particular Christian, “Pastor Ricky”, a Lutheran, is upset about the talking donkey: 

“Numbers 22:22-41 is an account atheists love to bring up to “prove” Christianity is false. They take this account of Balaam and his donkey and say, “So you believe animals can talk?” As usual, this is a trick question. First, it’s not so farfetched that animals can talk. Some birds like parakeets can clearly mimic human speech. I’ve seen videos of dogs “saying” something that closely resembles, “I love you” (which is rather adorable). “

Some animals can, but donkeys physically can’t.   So, his first whine fails.  BTW, snakes can’t talk either. 

“Secondly, verse 28 says, “Then the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey.” God is the one giving the donkey the ability to speak here.”

Yep, it does.  So the bible claims magic works, and no evidence for this claim at all.   

This story is ridiculous.  There’s a guy, Balak, who is upset that the Israelites are bothering people during their imaginary exodus.  Then this guy summons some guy, Balam, to “curse” the Israelites. Balam seems to be a guy who chats with this god.  Balam for some reason, has no idea who the Israelites are.  Balam refuses Balak.

Balak sends better people to ask him and more stuff, but Balam still refuses.  Then, this god tells Balam to go with them, but this time to only do what God says.  Amazing, a supposedly unchanging god changes his mind.    

Then, even better, God becomes pissed off at Balam for doing what God wanted.  God sends and angel to bother the donkey balam is riding on, so the donkey is beaten for no fault of its own.  Then this god makes the donkey talk asking why it is being hurt.  This dialogue also makes little sense. 

“8 Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and it said to Balaam, ‘What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?’ 29 Balaam said to the donkey, ‘Because you have made a fool of me! I wish I had a sword in my hand! I would kill you right now!’ 30 But the donkey said to Balaam, ‘Am I not your donkey, which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I been in the habit of treating you in this way?’ And he said, ‘No.’”

Then the angels reveals he’s been tormenting the donkey because it wouldn’t go where he wanted, and where this god said for him to go.  The angels says he would have killed Balam if he hadn’t turned around.  Then the angel says don’t turn around and repeats what this idiot god said, “go but do only what I say”. 

So, the donkey was hurt for no reason at all except for these idiots. 

“If the atheist is willing to admit, for the sake of argument, that God, being the Creator of the entire universe, can do literally whatever He wants with His creation—even giving an animal the ability to speak human language clearly—then this account is not so difficult to believe.”

yeah, we don’t agree on the fairy tales of the gullible and the dishonest. 

 “If God can literally create everything simply by speaking, surely He can give an ass the ability to speak. If, evolutionarily speaking, animals like parakeets and dogs can mimic human speech, it’s not that difficult of a concept to wrap your mind around when you simply entertain the possibility that God’s creative sovereignty means He can do literally anything with His creation. That’s what makes Him, you know, God.”

Still a problem, no evidence for this nonsense at all.  And it’s not evolution in the bible, it’s magic. 

“Taking pride in being scientifically minded and rational people, they are willing to suspend their disbelief when it comes to ridiculous and entertaining science-fiction feats in sci-fi movies and shows, but cannot for a moment suspend unbelief when God does things only He can do. Therefore, when atheists are aware of animals today mimicking human speech and refuse to accept that God does impossible Godlike things because He’s God and use strawmen fallacies like above, they ironically talk out of their own ass.”

Alas, poor Ricky is lying when he thinks that us non-christians literally believe that what movies show are true.  Nope, we just enjoy them.  We have no need to “suspend unbelief” when a Christian comes out with the lie that donkeys can talk, and their god is as stupid as the book makes it out to be.  His god does nothing at all.

And Ricky, mentioning the idiocy of your bible isn’t a strawman fallacy at all.  At least know your logical fallacies before you accuse anyone of using them. 

No wonder Ricky doesn’t allow comments.