I Cannot Imagine...

[Retorth]

I was chilling in my room, listening to Orbital's "Halcyon + On + On" (credit to Evie ) and I started to wonder about random things. One thing that struck me as rather interesting though:

It is currently the Hungry Ghost Festival and many chinese folks who are buddhist start burning mass amounts of paper money and little houses and cars made of paper because they believe all these things they burn will go to their loved ones in the afterlife. The "gates of hell" are supposedly reopened every year at this time so they send these "gifts". It is their way of "appeasing" them, basically.

Anyway, my point is, everywhere I look I see burnings and praying, joss sticks, and piles of ash from leftover burnings...I just can't imagine spending my whole life in such a deep religious mindset, to only end up simply returning to what I once was originally, and no amount of praying or worshipping or sucking up to a supernatural force is going to change that.

Edited

[Eilonnwy]

You don't really find out though, do you? Once your dead you have no knowledge of being dead, you're just gone and that's it. You can't cognitively realize that you were wrong about your notions of the afterlife.

[Retorth]

Yeah thats what I mean...when you go, you go...thats it. However, these people are so certain of afterlifes and all...

[Edwardo Piet]

And what evidence do they have to go by exactly?(A clue: None (what do I mean clue?! That's a give away!)).

People are credulous and often care about what they want the truth to be, more than what it really is.

Then there's the matter of indoctrination etc, and the whole consensus of people believing this BS for so many years. And many simply think that the fact so many people believe it, credits it somehow - it doesn't.

But yeah, it's ridiculous. But I can still just about imagine how people believe this stuff anyway.

I was chilling in my room, listening to Orbital's "Halcyon + On + On" (credit to Evie ) and I started to wonder about random things.

(my emphasis)

:Yeah that'll do it!!

EvF

[Minimalist]

Men freely believe that which they wish to be the truth.


-- G. Julius Caesar

[Meatball]

I find it really sad that people throw away so much time, and so many opportunities in their lives to superstition or misinformation. Not just religious folk either.

[Demonaura]

When I was younger, even through high school, I looked a lot into psychics. Not in the sense most people think of though, as an example one of my friends called himself a cryokinetic. Supposedly, he could chill himself and objects he touched by focusing on them.

These days I don't buy it but, back then I really wanted it to be true, I didn't truly believe, constantly my mind told me I was wasting my time but, I was able to pretend I didn't hear it, much like a child pretending he doesn't hear the teacher say that lunch break is over.

Personal experience still leads me to think that there is some level of truth in psychic events, however, I firmly believe if there is anything real to it then we will eventually understand it via the scientific process. If we can't then it's not reliable enough to work with anyways.

In the end though, I can always think back to my younger years and realise how easy it is to pretend something is real when you truly want to to be so.

[fr0d0]

I agree with you Demon. I tend to fall on the other side and dismiss those things. Like my own dreams of premonitions that I'm pretty sure I live through. I spent a lot of years clinging onto that like it was something special, when I think it really isn't. Andit's entirely non consequential.

[Retorth]

Fr0d0, you mean like dejavu?

[Edwardo Piet]

According to Dan Dennett, Deja vu is when your brain makes a mistake.

Your brain needs to keep track of the familar so it knows when it's seen something before, so it doesn't keep checking over the same things over and over and over.

According to DD, Deja Vu is when your brain triggers a "I've seen this before" response incorrectly.

EvF