The final point about positivism is important. Geeks love naturalistic explanations of mythological ideas, however far fetched. Trolls are really cultural memory of Neanderthals. Dragons are dinosaurs. The witch craze was due to ergot poisoning etc. If anyone is interested in what actual historians think about such theories, read for example this: https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/06/delphic-oracle.ht... Tl/dr:…
How can dragons be memories of dinosaurs? Or do you think some skeletons were found?
I think that's OPs point. It's shoehorned nonsense.
I don't think most people "lie about it", at least not intentionally. I think it's more likely they get really caught up in the moment or something among those lines. I am interested in what in what it would be like to go to a concert of a bar with one of these people.
> I don't think most people "lie about it", at least not intentionally. No, they do, and are usually pushed into it by prayer retreats and a forced lack of sleep (in the stories I've heard.) It's after they fake it once in order to sleep, then get into the habit of faking it, that they decide that they were never actually faking it, retconning the first incident into an awakening. It was once only tiny pentecostal se…
So they don’t lie about it. From their perspective they reinterpret sleep deprivation as metaphysical labour to culminate in ecstatic mystical experience. Especially in puritanical, austere contexts the power to shape an experienced story, such that there is a communal acceptance of a form of pleasure, is valuable, and the more unintentional the reinterpretation the more profound its influence and expression.
The final point about positivism is important. Geeks love naturalistic explanations of mythological ideas, however far fetched. Trolls are really cultural memory of Neanderthals. Dragons are dinosaurs. The witch craze was due to ergot poisoning etc. If anyone is interested in what actual historians think about such theories, read for example this: https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/06/delphic-oracle.ht... Tl/dr:…
How can dragons be memories of dinosaurs? Or do you think some skeletons were found?
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind has a very interesting answer to this question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...
Such a fun theory, we will probably never know how rocks started thinking…
> Moreover, ethylene in the concentrations that cause trances is extremely flammable, and there’s no historical record of any explosions or fires. That doesn't seem to be true. Herodotus 2.180: "When the Amphictyons paid three hundred talents to have the temple that now stands at Delphi finished (as that which was formerly there burnt down by accident), it was the Delphians' lot to pay a fourth of the cost." [1] I'm…
With apologies for hastiness, rushed day - Greek: "ὁ γὰρ πρότερον ἐὼν αὐτόθι αὐτόματος κατεκάη" ( http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... ) Literal translation: "because the one [= the temple] that previously existed in the same place completely burned down on its own" The crux here is on "αὐτόματος", for which see LSJ: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=au%29to%2Fmatos&...
I know barely enough Greek to sound it out, but "αὐτόματος" is "automatos", which probably gives enough information to anyone not interested in following the link.
Not training. Maybe she figured out that making up bullshit gave her power. Seems a lot simpler than "drugs".
I think this is too cynical. This was all religious practice for the time, and the Oracle probably believed she was actually receiving visions from Apollo just as many modern churchgoers believe in visions and prophecies from God.
Can’t it be both? I’d you truly believe the earth is flat because the person who taught you geography purposely led you to believe so, isn’t that both a sincere belief and a lie?
Well okay, but when the scientific method produces knowledge, the voracity of that knowledge can be checked by an observer. When a mystic convinces a large number of people that their opinions are in fact, truths, that is not a process that can be checked by an observer, and the “knowledge” produced has nothing tying itself back to reality.
I think this is too cynical. This was all religious practice for the time, and the Oracle probably believed she was actually receiving visions from Apollo just as many modern churchgoers believe in visions and prophecies from God.
Can’t it be both? I’d you truly believe the earth is flat because the person who taught you geography purposely led you to believe so, isn’t that both a sincere belief and a lie?
Yes, since the definition of 'lie' covers both intentional and unintentional deception, but I interpreted the above comment to be referring to intentional lies. " Maybe she figured out that making up bullshit gave her power" doesn't read as sincere belief to me.