Psience Quest

These are all the world's major religions in one map

Frank Jacobs

Quote:Of course, clarity comes at the cost of detail. The map bands together various Christian and Islamic schools of thought that don't necessarily accept each other as 'true believers'. It includes Judaism (only 15 million adherents, but the older sibling of the two largest religious groups) yet groups Sikhism (27 million) and various other more numerous faiths in with 'others'. And it doesn't make the distinction between atheism ("There is no god") with agnosticism ("There may or may not be a god, we just don't know").

And then there's the whole minefield of nuance between those who practice a religion (but may do so out of social coercion rather than personally held belief), and those who believe in something (but don't participate in the rituals of any particular faith). To be fair, that requires more nuance than even a great map like this can probably provide.

The Return of Paganism: Maybe there actually is a genuinely post-Christian future for America.

Ross Douhat

Quote:But the secularization narrative is insufficient, because even with America’s churches in decline, the religious impulse has hardly disappeared. In the early 2000s, over 40 percent of Americans answered with an emphatic “yes” when Gallup asked them if “a profound religious experience or awakening” had redirected their lives; that number had doubled since the 1960s, when institutional religion was more vigorous. A recent Pew survey on secularization likewise found increases in the share of Americans who have regular feelings of “spiritual peace and well-being.” And the resilience of religious impulses and rhetoric in contemporary political movements, even (or especially) on the officially secular left, is an obvious feature of our politics.

...There has to come a point at which a heresy becomes simply post-Christian, a moment when you should just believe people who claim they have left the biblical world-picture behind, a context where the new spiritualities add up to a new religion.

Which is why lately I’ve become interested in books and arguments that suggest that there actually is, or might be, a genuinely post-Christian future for America — and that the term “paganism” might be reasonably revived to describe the new American religion, currently struggling to be born.

A fascinating version of this argument is put forward by Steven D. Smith, a law professor at the University of San Diego, in his new book, “Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars From the Tiber to the Potomac.” Smith argues that much of what we understand as the march of secularism is something of an illusion, and that behind the scenes what’s actually happening in the modern culture war is the return of a pagan religious conception, which was half-buried (though never fully so) by the rise of Christianity.

What is that conception? Simply this: that divinity is fundamentally inside the world rather than outside it, that God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator, and that meaning and morality and metaphysical experience are to be sought in a fuller communion with the immanent world rather than a leap toward the transcendent.

Belief in aliens could be America’s next religion

‘American Cosmic’ explores how the once-fringe phenomenon has taken root among the powerful.

Quote:Polling shows that 35 percent of Americans believe that extraterrestrials came to earth in the past, and 26 percent believe that aliens have visited in modern times. This in itself does not necessarily make a new religion. Americans also believe, to varying degrees, in ghosts, Atlantis, and telekinesis. But according to Pasulka, UFO beliefs display other classic indicators of religion: sacred sites, sacred revelations, and testimony by credible witnesses to miraculous events.

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Just 46% of U.K. Christians believe Jesus died, resurrected

A new poll reveals that less than half (46 percent) of the Christians in the United Kingdom believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the world’s sins.

How millennials replaced religion with astrology and crystals

Jessica Roy

Quote:And no, they don’t particularly care if you think it’s “woo-woo” or weird. Most millennials claim to not take any of it too seriously themselves. They dabble, they find what they like, they take what works for them and leave the rest. Evoking consternation from buttoned-up outsiders is far from a drawback — it’s a fringe benefit.

“I know this work is weird,” Lilia said of her breathwork practice. “But it makes me feel better and that's why I keep doing it.”

The cause behind the spiritual shift is a combination of factors. In more than a dozen interviews for this story with people ranging in age from 18 to their early 40s, a common theme emerged: They were raised with one set of religious beliefs — Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist — but as they became adults, they felt that faith didn’t completely represent who they were or what they believed.

Millennials increasingly identify as “nones” when asked about their religious affiliation, according to a 2017 Pew survey: They are atheist or agnostic, or say they are “spiritual but not religious.”

But yes-or-no survey questions don’t tell the whole story...

'Waking The Witch' Author Pam Grossman On Why Witches Are Having Such A Huge Cultural Moment

Peg Aloi

Quote:Social media has been a huge driver for this, and it’s obviously crescendoing," Grossman tells me in a phone interview. "For some people, it’s more about the fashion or some other aspect of the culture of witchcraft. But I don’t think that should be trivialized. People are gravitating towards this archetype that represents the female experience in all its complexity, light and dark. More people are also wanting an alternative spiritual experience outside the framework of organized religion, and I think witchcraft provides that."

Seeking the essence of consciousness in the human brain

Quote:...says Hameroff, “I believe that consciousness….has been in the universe all along, perhaps from the Big Bang.” From his intense work in anesthesiology and research of near-death experiences, he explains that, when the heart stops beating and blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their “quantum state,” but the information in the microtubules is not destroyed, it is rather “distributed to the universe at large,” and if the patient is revived, the quantum information can go back into the microtubules of that patient’s brain.

This is where the often-repeated, vivid recollection of revived patients comes from — a near-death experience, a white light or a tunnel, or floating out of their bodies. As Hameroff observes in his so-called Orch-OR theory of consciousness, “It’s quite possible that this quantum information can exist outside of the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.” His research in anesthesiology is widely recognized as proof that anesthesia targets consciousness by way of action on neural microtubules.

Quote:Then consider a compelling observation by a reputable mathematical physicist and author who backs the Hemeroff/Penrose position, Dr. Henry P. Stepp. He actually goes further than they, building upon their compelling theory by submitting that a person’s personality can “exist as a mental entity after death, and if these entities can manage to pull themselves back into the physical world, things like channeling and possession by mediums can actually happen.”

One can’t help but remark that pulling oneself back into the physical world would make sense for some attractive places said to be haunted right here in town, such as a magnificent old home on Main Road where a long-gone sea captain has been seen out and about, or a frequently observed, hovering mist years ago on the staircase of the old Jamesport Manor Inn, or the figures some have noticed at the homestead of the Hallockville Museum Farm on Sound Avenue. But why would any “conscious entity,” trying to “pull back into the physical world,” end up in a 1950s highboy chest of drawers?

Interesting to see these ideas percolating down to a local paper's website...

Quote:One can’t help but remark that pulling oneself back into the physical world would make sense for some attractive places said to be haunted right here in town, such as a magnificent old home on Main Road where a long-gone sea captain has been seen out and about, or a frequently observed, hovering mist years ago on the staircase of the old Jamesport Manor Inn, or the figures some have noticed at the homestead of the Hallockville Museum Farm on Sound Avenue. But why would any “conscious entity,” trying to “pull back into the physical world,” end up in a 1950s highboy chest of drawers?

This bit is certainly meant to be a throwaway gag, but it does hold an underlying point. Are all (or for that matter, any) of these ‘ghosts’ conscious? If not, what exactly is preventing us from finding a way to “contain” and fully study recurrent “hovering mist” phenomena? We do, after all, know exactly where it’s going to manifest before hand.

(2019-08-02, 06:18 AM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]I thought it was hugely inaccurate, and the ending suggested that it was a bit tongue in cheek...

Oh the whole article is a mess, I was just surprised to see a local paper talking about some of the stuff that gets discussed here.

Another local paper mentioning Orch OR:

Letter: Quantum theory may explain the soul

Chris Curran Dombrowski

Quote:A new quantum theory of consciousness called “Orch OR” — orchestrated objective reduction — states that the recent discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons gives rise to consciousness. Microtubules (protein polymers) govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes at the quantum level. Scientists believe that the Orch OR theory can account for the afterlife.

One corresponding scientist is Stuart Hameroff, M.D., professor emeritus at the Department of Anesthesiology and Psychology and the director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. He and Sir Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist at the Mathematical Institute and University of Oxford, propose that overall brain function derives from quantum level microtubule vibrations. They believe that from a practical medical perspective, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental and neurological conditions.

Hameroff and Penrose, according to the Huffington Post, state that “the connection to space-time geometry also raises the intriguing possibility that Orch OR allows consciousness apart from the brain and body, distributed and entangled in space-time geometry. It’s possible that the quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.”

Thus it is held that our souls are greater than the interaction of neurons in the brain. They are in fact created from the very fabric of the holoverse and may have been present since the genesis of time.

A meta question (haven't read the linked-to articles, so can't comment on those): did you mean to post links on Orch-OR in this thread, Sci? Or was that an accident, and had you intended to post them in the dedicated thread?