Choose sides

”No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Matthew 6:24

Regardless of what kind of Christian you are, you have to choose sides. (Prosperity theology is not a Christian faith.)

This also applies to other forms of spirituality. You can not be both a spiritual seeker and a social climber striving for money and power. You have to choose which path to take.

Even those not religiously or spiritually inclined have to make up their mind. Are you a careerist? Do you believe that competition is good? Do you think that all that counts is money? Does it not matter to you which mountain you climb as long as you become someone with other people to look down upon?

Telepathic waves

Not so few people have experienced synchronicities or telepathic phenomena. Does this mean that your mind is not confined to inside your skull?

Your eyes detect photons, and your ears detect waves in the air, but what part of you detects telepathic signals? And what is a telepathic signal?

Are we connected somehow, also without telephones or the Internet?

What if some of your thoughts and emotions are not created in your brain?

What if all of your thoughts and emotions are created somewhere outside of you? The brain may be some kind of receiver, some speculate.

Why do so many stupid, silly, and nasty thoughts arise in the brain? Have someone hacked our minds?

Evolution

What if God is a kind of scientist? Maybe he created a single cell in his laboratory some 3,5 billion years ago. He may have made a lot of cells, but only one of them survived and multiplied.

A billion years later, he mixed up cells that had evolved and managed to create an eukaryotic cell. Only one of these experiments was successful; only one of those cells survived.

Six hundred million years ago, he managed to create multicellular organisms from these eukaryotic cells. Multicellular organisms evolved, and biological robots with intelligence slowly emerged.

Some of these robots developed their own will, and God lost control of his creations, like the boffins of today who lose control of their organisms which escape their laboratories and create havoc.

The Placebo effect

Both the red pill and the blue are sugar pills.

Ordinary men

On the thirteenth of July 1942, the German Reserve Battalion 101 in Lublin executed 1,500 Jewish women, children and the elderly. The battalion leader, Wilhelm Trapp, was a wise man. He offered the men who did not want to participate in the mission to step aside and promised not to punish them. He understood that some of them would not be able to shoot children without making a fool of themselves. Twelve men out of five hundred accepted the offer. What do you think was decisive when these twelve men made their decisions? And what were the motivations that influenced the other 488 men? Was the genes making the decisions, or was it their worldview?

Ordinary Men Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland By Christopher R. Browning

Actors

There have always been people who have lived outside of society: loners and fugitives, thugs, partisans, and spiritual seekers. In ancient times they hid in deep forests or in the mountains, but nowadays, it's hard to find a place where we can be in peace. That's why we stay here. Some perish, others blend in with the crowd and pretend to be ordinary citizens, much like homosexuals were forced to do in the old days.

Outside views

10-15% of all adults are social misfits. They have a personality disorder, severe substance abuse problems, or some mental illness. But some misfits have no serious mental problems; they simply don't want to be a part of society. We belong to a small group, but we exist. Is it possible, do you think, to find an evolutionary explanation for this strange behavior?

Labels

You label yourself as something. You are Sunni or Shiite, humanist or Pentecostal, liberal or conservative. You belong to an ethnic group or a clan, a tribe or a gang. You have an identity. You are Jewish or Greek, Arab or American. Why is it so hard, do you think, just to be human?

The map and the territory

It's better to have a map that doesn't agree with the territory than no map at all. You feel more secure, your health is better, and you have more friends. This is confirmed in many well-conducted studies.

Faith

Even though the United States has by far the world's most significant military power and even though they received help from several other countries, the Taliban became an overpowering opponent. The Taliban have pretty much nothing but their faith. Faith can move mountains. Doubt, on the other hand, makes us insecure and neurotic.

Belonging without believing or believing without belonging

Some people call themselves Christians, but they refuse to turn the other cheek, and they prefer to store up for themselves treasures on earth - in tax havens.

Democracy

In the 2020 US presidential election, 74 million Americans voted for Trump, and 81 million voted for Biden. 79 million did not bother to vote. For them, it didn't matter who became president. It would make no difference to them and their life situation. And many of those who voted for Biden were very negative about him, but they felt that the alternative was even worse. Many would rather have voted for Bernie Sanders.

In the second round, in the last French presidential election, 18.8 million French voted for Macron, 13.3 million voted for Marine LePen, and 13.6 million did not vote. 2.2 million voted blankly. And many of those who voted for Macron resented him deeply and voted for him solely to prevent LePen from coming to power.

When Italians went to the polls last year, 7.3 million voted for Giorgia Meloni. 16.6 million did not bother to vote.

I have also stopped voting. I don't care anymore.

To swim against the stream is as foolish as following it. The only sensible thing is trying to get ashore.

The multitude

How did Hitler become what he became? He was also a cute little kid when he was little. Did his father abuse him? Did an evil spirit take possession of him? Was he a malignant narcissist? What does it matter? Isn't the most crucial question why so many people began to worship him?

Outsiders

We who no longer belong anywhere often feel lonely. That's why we, too, have formed an association, a secret society. But we have no leader, no doctrine to follow, and no special meeting places. We don't wear any signs of our affiliation, no silly hats or necklaces. We recognize each other when we happen to meet.

Jump off the bandwagon

You don't have to adhere to a religion or political ideology. You don't have to be a right-winger for the rest of your life just because you happen to be a right-winger right now. You don't have to be a Marxist, a religious fundamentalist, or a follower of a spiritual teacher. It's possible to drop out and simply be a human being.

Many former cult members have left their cult despite losing all their friends. There are alcoholics who have stopped drinking and smokers who have quit smoking. There are even careerists who have resigned from their top jobs in business to have more time for family life.

The horse doesn't need the rider; it's the rider who needs the horse.

What if also you have been deceived? What if everything you believe in and live for is misconceptions, or worse, pure idiocy? It's not impossible, on the contrary. Throughout history, people have always been deceived into one thing or another, which later turned out to be misconceptions or sheer idiocy.