Carl-Richard

The question was answered.

Don't do the 5-MeO-DMT, don't smoke weed, stop meditating for a while, find some friends and be a real person. Things will get better.

What is your definition of religious fundamentalism? The separation between the fundamentalist and modernist Christians in the 1920s in the US happened because some of the Christians started questioning some of the dogmas. According to your definition, the modernist Christians are no longer religious.

In general, do you think it's better to do spiritual practice in a room filled with exhaust and maggots eating at your eyeballs while somebody is giving you intravenous injections of PCP and alcohol, or would you prefer a more healthy environment? Sure, you can expose yourself to stressors in a controlled way as a part of your spiritual practice, but the key there is "controlled". When something is outside your control and you can't change it and it affects your health, that is not good for spiritual practice. "Social stuff" is to trivialize it. It's a social safety net, a buffer for stressors, mental health support and care, and a source of knowledge and wisdom from people who know more than you (and preferably an old tradition tested by time). This particular point is very personal to me. The lack of a social safety net around me when I first awakened is the greatest injustice I've experienced as a human. I'll acknowledge like I did earlier that some lineages of particularly Christianity was burdened by some theological shifts around 400 BC (but again, this not endemic to religion in general). But other than that, the difference between New Age faith and Christian faith is that you'll be promised heaven on Earth instead of heaven in the afterlife, and in both cases, you have to indeed take it on faith until you're on the other side, and you have to trust some external example outside yourself as a motivator (your guru, your saint, your savior). What that looks like in practice is identical for both cases: it's the same levels of dogmatism, confusion, self-deception. The difference is that the New Ager does it mostly alone while fearing for their sanity and while probably getting exploited by some eccentric figure on the fringes of society.

By that definition, I became religious when I was 14 and found Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris on YouTube. What you described sounds more like religious fundamentalism: people who take a very literalist interpretation of holy scriptures (e.g. Adam and Eve literally existed) and an absolutist stance to their religion ("my religion is the only truth"). That is just one type of religiosity. Also, fundamentalism is not specific to religion either. When I was 14, I though that scientific theories were literally true, and that science was the only truth. You can also take a symbolic and pluralistic interpretation of scriptures (i.e. not literal and not the only truth). For example, the story of the Fall can be interpreted as a metaphor for when humans became self-aware, which probably happened 30-50k years ago (we developed the ability think symbolically and self-reflect, remember the past and predict the future, which created the conscious egoic identity). When the ego was created, we were separated from God and "fell into sin". To transcend the ego is to reunite with God and clear yourself of sin. If you take that interpretation, just imagine what other kinds of wisdom is hidden in there. Even so, fundamentalist religion is not incompatible with your favorite parts of spirituality either. You can still have direct experiences of the divine as a fundamentalist, but of course, it's generally a bit harder, particularly in Christianity (you can thank St. Augustine for that who started placing God outside of direct experience): https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/invention-faith-pistis-and-fides-early-churches-and-later-roman-empire @UnbornTao @Understander So what you guys are really opposed is neither religion in general nor religious fundamentalism, but rather something like the views of one theologian in one branch of Christianity.

I'm fine with what I'm doing now After I found a standardized data cleaning protocol for the survey that I used for measuring physical activity (Godin's Leisure-Time Questionnaire), the first hypothesis turned out to actually be statistically significant at p < 0.10, which is cool, but it's a really weak effect (the standardized regression coefficient is at 0.070). I could probably easily add another 50% to the sample size if I wanted to, but I would rather move on to more important stuff. I used a linear regression in JASP.

So I had two hypotheses in my bachelor thesis: H1: mindfulness is correlated with physical activity H2: controlling for intrinsic motivation towards exercise weakens the correlation between mindfulness and physical activity, which could indicate that the effect of mindfulness on physical activity is mediated by intrinsic motivation towards exercise. I ran the analyses, and none of the hypotheses had a statistically significant result (which means both hypotheses get scrapped). Then right after running the analyses, I had the realization that running an analysis for another hypothesis (H3: "mindfulness is correlated with intrinsic motivation towards exercise") is the logical next step after scrapping H1 and H2, because it could add support to a moderation relationship as opposed to a meditation relationship (mindfulness moderates the relationship between intrinsic motivation towards exercise and physical activity). The stupid thing though is that I had this realization right after running the analyses for the other hypotheses, which means that H3 becomes a "post-hoc" hypothesis, and presenting it alongside the other hypotheses would be considered HARKing ("“presenting a post hoc hypothesis in the introduction of a research report as if it were an a priori hypothesis”), which is considered an ethically dubious practice. There are many types of HARKing, and there are many different views on what types of HARKing are considered OK, and there is this one view that says that this particular scenario is an OK form of HARKing (because it's justified based on the theoretical background of the thesis), and also, my advisor says that I could do it and it would be OK by him, but I still feel tormented by it. If I had only spent one second thinking through the consequences of scrapping H1 and H2 before running the analyses, I would virtually certainly have spotted this extremely obvious H3, and I would not be in this situation. So yes, I feel tormented by it even though my advisor has green-lighted it, so am I being too neurotic? Do you think a very strict examiner would penalize me for going along with it? (I'm of course going to disclose the whole decision-making process behind H3, which is called "THARKING" — a transparent form for HARKing, which absolutely minimizes the ethical dubiousness). I don't want to poison my work with ethical misconduct ? I would truly appreciate some advice

What is your definition of religion?

All I'm saying is that seeking the highest value is a fundamental need within the human organism. I'm not saying what the expression of that has to look like. But what I am saying is that it's better to fulfill that need it in a way that also supports other human needs, like safety, belonging, etc., which is why I propose to you the need for religion. You wouldn't go to a restaurant if they only served food but no drinks. You'll feel like you're missing something. And that is all religion truly is: spirituality without the obvious missing pieces. I don't see how discovering spirituality through some obscure YouTube video and meditating in your basement without anybody in your life knowing what the hell you are doing is just how things are meant to be. A spiritual guru is followed, a spiritual path is followed, a spiritual concept is taken on faith until it's experienced. And instead of getting the concepts from a culture, you get it from a cult.

That moment when the first sentence in the introduction of the most widely used measurement device for dispositional mindfulness in the scientific community is a reference to Ken Wilber

You only fight for things that are highly valueable. Hell no ? Richard Dawkins might be old, but he is still alive.

Is food a relative value? Does something being relative change the fact that it's an universal human need? "The highest value" is a human need, and it can be manifested in many different forms. What that exactly looks like has only gotten a little weird because of things like postmodernism and capitalism. That's a relative notion, dogma in fact. Distinguish between the need for religion as a general concept and a particular fundamentalist interpretation of an already existing religion.

If I can accurately predict and label every utterance you make, wouldn't that be a little bit concerning for somebody who is scared about being trapped in a belief system? We can chill if you want to

I'm not sure how to interpret your post. If you're saying that religious people are not conscious of the absolute, you'd be surprised how many Christian, Sufi, Hindu, etc. mystics you just offended. If you're saying John Vervaeke or Bernardo Kastrup are not conscious of the absolute, Vervaeke is a practicing Buddhist who has had awakening experiences, Kastrup has taken psychedelics and had ego death experiences many times (and is friends with Rupert Spira). They're not just book nerds (even though that isn't actually relevant to what we're talking about imo).

@UnbornTao Yep, one minute in and that sounds exactly like New Age dogma: "religion is based on belief". But hey, I can agree that most fundamentalists Christians approach it that way, but then you have people like John Vervaeke, Bernardo Kastrup or some of my professors who bring a bit more nuance to the concept. Besides, my previous points still stand: New Age spirituality is not immune to anything that religion is not immune against, and in fact, thinking that it is, will only make it more likely that you'll deceive yourself.

When you realize you don't know nothing, you're just left with your best guess, but that also works.

My 333rd eye is opened far and wide. 13:01 (Volume warning.) (Volume warning for the entire album, I just posted because of the title.)

Like mentioned earlier, spirituality and religion isn't all that different when it comes to traps like beliefs vs. direct experience, or group-think, or dogmatism. Besides, New Agers will tell you things like "go out into the forest and meditate, that is where the real work is done" ...while typing on an internet forum... where they have thousands of posts. See what I'm saying? It's so obvious that you're craving these things I'm talking about. You're just making do with a constipated version of it. And when I present that case, what is the reponse? New Age dogma ("religion is about beliefs"). (@UnbornTao I didn't mean to sidetalk you like that, but it was what was on my mind ?).

It's the best artistic rendition of a bad trip I've ever experienced.

2000 years ago, you had religion The death of God was very recent.

@Lila9 *Claims to be spiritual* *Has 666 posts* ?‍♂️

So should we just be lonely New Age carrot farmers then? Is that a better alternative?

It's to serve as many human needs as possible. If you don't want it, you can reject it, but if it was indeed serving your needs, would you really feel the need to do that? Probably not, but again, if I was in charge, I wouldn't stop you. Also again, I'm of course not talking about force-feeding you, an old dog, a new way to interface with the world. This is for the youth. See if you can find the 7 features of the friend of the blue-haired nerd.

Spirituality is the search for the highest value ("the sacred"), be it God, Truth, Love, etc. New Age spirituality borrows concepts and practices from traditional spiritual traditions, but it does so in an incomplete way (examples are Ram Dass, Rupert Spira, Eckhart Tolle, Leo Gura, etc.). Traditional spirituality is found in things like Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, etc. New Age spirituality places much more emphasis on aspects like mysticism (the direct experience of the divine) and associated practices (meditation), while traditional spirituality has a more holistic approach to serving human needs (e.g. the Eightfold path in Buddhism, the four puruṣārthas in Hinduism, etc.). Also, the distinction between spirituality and religion is really less about substance and more about history. I just think of religion as traditional spirituality. Nevertheless, traditional spirituality is much closer to the type of grand narrative that I've been talking about than New Age spirituality.

It's possible to convince yourself that you've transcended parts of your humanity, or to become accustomed to your own trauma, while in reality you're just not living up to your full potential. Survival is not flourishing. Think about a grand narrative like an all-you-can-eat buffet. There are so many different types of food in one place, but you're so stubborn that you don't even want to taste it, and instead you want to spend your days growing your own carrots while all your friends are having fun in the restaurant. Religion is the all-you-can eat buffet, and New Age spirituality is the lonely carrot farmer.