Gods (or Godesses) aren't going to help us where we are going. Get over it.
Emlyn
----- Original Message -----
From: <Spudboy100@aol.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2000 3:30 AM
Subject: Re: just me
> Not to get holy-roller on anyone here, but I agree with Samatha's
conjecture
> that if there is no God, then there is certainly room for one in a
Universe
> that includes suffering. What Samantha gets when she "recieves a lift"
from
> reading certain religious tracts is one of the religious experiences
> described by 19th century psychologist Willam James.  Having a God module
is
> good if it connects one up with a sense of a better ethical system. If it
> leads only to the Inquisition torture chamber, then it's a bad bet.  So I
am
> talking 'outcomes' here.
>
> Ultimately, it may turn out that some advanced primate species (humans)
once
> had a God module as part of their brain, and it helped them develop
computers
> that colonized the cosmos, which in the end leads to an ultimate Mind
(God)
> which fixed things that needed fixing (since it has ultimate computing
power)
> and help resurrect people such as Samantha! This is more inspired from a
> reading of Julian Barbour (The End of Time)  as well as Tipler and
Barrow's
> Final Anthropic Principle. Talk amongst yourselves, i'm getting
ver-klempt!
> (sob!)
> -Mitch
>
>
> In a message dated 9/16/00 2:15:24 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> samantha@objectent.com writes:
>
> << But when the God module kicks in things happen similar to stuff in  the
>  mystical literature.  I don't levitate or anything really wild like that
>  but it feels as if my being is lifted up and sometimes turned inside out
>  and that I am within or in communion with or at least sense deeply this
>  much larger Presence, Power, whatever you want to call it. The "me"
>  disappears mostly or melts into whatever this is or gets recast
>  somehow.   The emotions soar into the heavens.  It goes beyond anything
>  I can put into words pretty rapidly. Often it will include what seems
>  like a tremendous amount of information  and intensionality and directed
>  energy sweeping through me.  I have guesses (ranging from faulty mental
>  wiring to too much religous upbringing to substances sampled in my
>  youth  to Vingean powers looking for agents to ???) but no real
>  explanation for it.  It just is - now and then.  Thankfully rare enough
>  it doesn't totally sweep me away.  It came close when I used to meditate
>  more.  Whatever it is meditation intensified it quite a bit.  So I
>  stopped doing that because shadows of whatever this is became too strong
>  to allow me to concentrate on my work easily.
>
>
>  - samantha >>
>
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