Issue 24: Focus On Converting to Christianity
Jesus is coming, look busy!
Everyone is converting to Christianity. Or at least it seems that way when we look at social networks. You may have found yourself unable to unsee Russell Brand in his underwear, standing in the River Thames, baptizing someone. At least we can say that he doesn’t waste time. A more hesitant, dare we say humble, person might wait at least a few months after being baptized oneself before jumping in there, but there are souls to save and rape allegations from which to deflect attention! Fortunately for his reputation he was baptizing another man and not a scantily-clad young woman.
Forgive the cynicism. And it’s certainly not the case that all the recent high-profile converts are in it for similar reasons to Brand (even he is probably at least semi-sincere, it’s very difficult to tell). We don’t want to fall into the trap that the Conspirituality podcast made in their episode about celebrity conversions where they appeared to tar Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman and RB with the same brush.
We don’t share their apparent default assumption that one can only convert for the wrong reasons and that adopting a religion is inherently mistaken. There is surely a spectrum from ‘deeply sincere’ to ‘this is incredibly convenient for my public profile’, and recent converts are spread along it.
It’s true that secularism, materialism, and (especially) consumerism have failed to fill the God-shaped hole opened up by Darwin, Nietzsche, Dawkins, and others over the past couple centuries. Humanity does appear to possess a deeply religious impulse, a need for transcendent meaning. Western culture comes out of our Judeo-Christian history, so it’s not surprising that people go back to that well to drink when they thirst for significance. We present these links, as always, so you can remain informed and make up your own mind.
Table of Contents
Events
Links
Finding The Shanti Within A Conversation Between Virginia Vigliar And Ashanti Kunene - advaya
A Simple Question to Ask Yourself - by Matthew Green
Professor Abigail Marsh discusses psychopathy as a continuum rather than a binary concept
The big idea: how to use your senses to help beat depression - Mental health - The Guardian
My years in a cult that groomed children to have sex with adults
How A Fortuitous Meeting Can Pinball Your Life - Dr. Bruce Damer
Focus On: Converting to Christianity
Behind the Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex - Vanity Fair
I now think a heretical form of Christianity might be true - Aeon Essays
Russell Brand: Baptism is 'opportunity to leave the past behind’ amid sexual assault allegations
Macho Christianity is flexing its muscles - UnHerd
Get Ready for AI Religions: Sam Altman, Transhumanism and The Merge
Stumbling towards Bethlehem by Paul Kingsnorth
Jordan Hall Converts to Christianity
Christianity For The Based by Alex Ebert
Put the mind in the heart - by Jonathan Rowson
Nuggets From The Archive
Synesthesia Research Survey Results on Psychedelic Experiences
A Taxonomy of Consciousness by Robert Kuhn
Exploring the Universe through Multiple Personality Disorder Theory
Non-Clinging Practice by Rob Burbea
Events
With Reality in Mind: Bernardo Kastrup 5-Week Q&A with guest Christof Koch
Tue 29th Oct 2024, 8pm – Tue 26th Nov 2024, 10:30pm CET (UTC +01:00). Online
Another cohort of this excellent class with philosopher Bernardo Kastrup, this time with author Christof Koch as a guest.
Climate Consciousness Summit
Friday November 15th-21st, online.
Bringing together the climate and healing movements. Organized by Thomas Hübl’s Pocket Project and featuring more than twenty keynote speakers.
Subtle is Significant! Meditate with Shinzen Young
Sat, Nov 16, 2024 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM CET. Online
A four hour meditation class with mindfulness teacher and neuroscience research consultant Shinzen Young, organized by the Consciousness Explorers Club.
Links
Finding The Shanti Within A Conversation Between Virginia Vigliar And Ashanti Kunene · advaya
Virginia and South African activist and artist Ashanti (who recently spoke at our Future of Consciousness seminar) talk about finding inner peace in the face of modern life's distractions and stresses, unlearning, and interbeing or ‘Ubuntu’ “That is the work! Unlearning the stories, the conditioning, really, and relearning a new way and changing the way in which you walk through the world”.
A Simple Question to Ask Yourself - by Matthew Green
Reflecting on our recent Future of Consciousness seminar, and particularly the session featuring Ashanti Kunene, Matthew Green writes about a concept which jumped out at him in the context of his role as ‘Toxic Workplace Survival Guy’: “misalignment with Self” — the question is, do we want to continue in a situation where we feel fundamentally misaligned? And how to regain our equilibrium and find our way back to ourselves?
Psychopathy can be treated—but here’s why it rarely is | Prof. Abigail Marsh
Professor Abigail Marsh discusses psychopathy as a continuum rather than a binary concept, with individuals existing along a spectrum from a complete lack of care to an excessive concern for others. According to Marsh, this condition is linked to deficits in fear recognition, empathy, and decision-making, which can be attributed to abnormalities in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. She emphasizes that while psychopathy can be challenging to treat, improvements in interpersonal relationships are possible, and highlights the Imprint learning app as a valuable resource for those seeking to understand psychology and related topics in an engaging and interactive way.
The big idea: how to use your senses to help beat depression | Mental health | The Guardian
Researchers are exploring the connection between sensory experience and mental well-being, finding that stimulating one's senses can help alleviate symptoms of depression. By engaging with the world around us through activities like walking in nature, cooking with vivid flavors, and listening to music that resonates, individuals can tap into their senses and cultivate a greater sense of presence and awareness. This sensory approach can help counterbalance the numbness and disconnection often associated with depression, helping us create a deeper connection to ourselves and the world.
News - PsychedeliCare.EU
PyschedeliCare is a new organization launching on 14 January 2025 to call for the future roll-out of psychedelic assisted-therapies in the European healthcare systems. The initiative supports the right of EU citizens to access affordable psychedelic-assisted therapies, if needed.
My years in a cult that groomed children to have sex with adults
A lot of people saw the Netflix documentary ‘Wild Wild Country’ about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) and his sannyasins as they tried to take control of a small town in Oregon, with catastrophic results. But what was not mentioned in that series was the prevalence of child sex abuse within the organization. Rajneesh believed that in order to dissolve sexual shame, adults should not hide the fact that they were having sex with each other when kids were present. Yet this inevitably - once sufficient pedophiles found out about it - spilled over into the kids becoming sexually abused within the cult. This is a revealing interview with Ma Prem Sargam who, at the age of 12, found herself in a deeply traumatizing situation.
How A Fortuitous Meeting Can Pinball Your Life
Dr. Bruce Damer shares a fascinating story about a chance encounter with a fellow scientist, Dr. Amanda Feilding from the Beckley Foundation, that sparked a series of events that would change the course of his life. The two had a brief conversation, long enough to exchange phone numbers and start a collaboration that would eventually lead to a new and groundbreaking research project. As Damer recounts, this chance meeting was the starting point for a pinball-like effect, where events would bounce off each other and create unexpected outcomes. By embracing this mindset, he was able to create a chain of events that would lead to personal growth, new discoveries, and lasting connections with others.
Focus On: Converting to Christianity
Behind the Catholic Right’s Celebrity-Conversion Industrial Complex | Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair explores the phenomenon of celebrity conversions to Catholicism, examining how some well-known men have publicly embraced the faith and, implicitly, gone over to a more conservative way of thinking. The appeal of traditionalism, mystique, and the cultural cachet associated with Catholicism has attracted various celebrities. These conversions are often publicized by groups within the church with the intention of amplifying their message and normalizing the act of conversion, creating a sort of flywheel effect where each conversion creates yet more.
I now think a heretical form of Christianity might be true | Aeon Essays
Philip Goff, a philosopher and well-known advocate for panpsychism, has been re-examining his views on Christianity and is now considering the possibility that a non-traditional form of the faith might hold up to closer examination. While traditionally skeptical of Christian teachings, Goff has found merit in certain Gnostic ideas that emphasize a more direct and personal relationship with the divine. He is particularly drawn to the concept of unity, which suggests that individuals are interconnected in a fundamental way, and that this sense of shared humanity is at the heart of traditional Christian teachings. Goff says that both theists and atheists ‘hate me’, so we think he must be doing something right!
Russell Brand: Baptism is 'opportunity to leave the past behind’ amid sexual assault allegations
Russell Brand has recently embraced Christianity, recently getting baptized amidst allegations of rape and sexual assault (which he denies). It’s obviously nothing to do with the fact that this will play well with his new found right wing public, after being canceled by his former leftist audience.
Macho Christianity is flexing its muscles - UnHerd
Mary Harrington explains that a new trend of masculine Christianity is emerging, with figures like Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson leading large prayer gatherings. This shift comes as young men are increasingly turning to the Christian faith, while young women gravitate towards progressive ideologies. Two factors contribute to this phenomenon: a growing sense of existential spiritual conflict in an increasingly disorienting world, and young men conditioned by video games extending their interest in ideational battles to reality itself. This macho Christianity contrasts with post-war Christianity, which emphasized peace and vulnerability. The trend may be a response to perceived threats to Western values from Islamists and neo-Marxists, with some arguing that traditional Christianity is necessary to unite and defend Western civilization. However, critics view this as a performative and potentially dangerous return to old religious paradigms.
Get Ready for AI Religions: Sam Altman, Transhumanism and The Merge
Alexander Beiner explores the potential for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to give rise to new forms of religiosity. He notes that Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is sparking some interesting conversations by predicting that AI will soon become a major player in shaping our spiritual lives. Altman apparently thinks that as AI becomes more advanced and starts to mimic human-like intelligence, people will begin to treat it as a kind of digital deity, creating entirely new spiritual frameworks and even "AI religions". Beiner also goes into the (mostly unconscious) Christian underpinnings of the doctrine of ‘The Singularity’ among tech bros.
Stumbling towards Bethlehem - by Paul Kingsnorth
Paul Kingsnorth talks about his own gradual conversion to Orthodox Christianity, and about how modern society is trying to create a new god through technology, particularly in Silicon Valley. He cites examples from transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil and Zoltan Istvan, and argues that this is a replay of the story of the Garden of Eden, where humans seek to become gods by rejecting the original creator. Kingsnorth also goes into his personal experience of growing up in nature and finding spiritual meaning in it, contrasting with the focus on materialism and economic growth in modern society.
Jordan Hall Converts to Christianity
Jordan Hall, one of the ‘galaxy brain sensemaker’ crew around Covid time, and a regular guest on Emerge podcast, recently converted to Christianity. He explains in this episode how his journey began when he visited a town where ISIS had crucified many Yazidi people, making him realize how different Western morality and values are from those of ancient civilizations. This experience led him to study the Christian foundations of Western civilization. Hall now acknowledges that rejecting Christianity would be ‘like trying to reap the harvest without acknowledging its roots’. He believes that popular culture's condemnation of Christianity is often unfair and inaccurate, exaggerating historical events such as witch burnings and the Inquisition for political reasons.
Christianity For The Based - by Alex Ebert - Bad Guru
Ebert suspects that some of the ‘sensemaking community’ - such as the recently converted Jordan Hall, or Peter Limberg of The Stoa - are claiming to be carrying out an open-minded enquiry, but in fact they have already made up their minds that religion, and more specifically Christianity, is the answer. It’s just that now that it’s become ‘cool’ to be Christian it’s seen as okay to reveal what one was feeling all along anyway. One might also feel that Alex is also demonstrating his ‘even cooler than thou’ mindset by rejecting the current trend for converting even before it gets into full swing. Or maybe that’s too cynical.
Put the mind in the heart - by Jonathan Rowson
Rowson, in contrast to some of the others featured here, has not converted to Christianity as such, yet here he writes lovingly of his ‘spiritual teacher’, esoteric Christian teacher and writer Cynthia Bourgealt. “I am not a Christian”, he states, “but nor am a-Christian or anti-Christian and it would be foolish to be so. Indeed, perhaps the main personal impact of the work I led on public engagement with spirituality a decade ago was that I came to appreciate the wellsprings of truth, beauty and goodness within my own cultural tradition”. Bourgealt does have some very interesting and unorthodox ideas that would probably pay back further attention.
Nuggets From The Archive
Dr David Luke - Psychedelic Synaesthesia: New Light on Old Phenomena
Dr. David Luke explores the condition of congenital synesthesia, where sensory experiences trigger other concurrent sensory experiences, as well as induced psychedelic synesthesia, which occurs temporarily under the influence of substances like LSD. Research conducted by Dr. Luke and a colleague involved an extensive online survey of 16,000 respondents to understand the prevalence and types of synesthesia experienced under the influence of various drugs, including LSD and psilocybin. The findings suggest a correlation between congenital synesthesia and psychedelically induced synesthesia, and highlight the dynamic synesthetic connections between sound and color that often occur under the influence of psychedelics. While the types of psychedelic drugs used may influence the type of synesthetic experiences reported, no clear patterns were found across different drug classes, and further analysis is still underway to explore the relationship between specific drugs and the types of synesthesia induced. See our issue on synesthesia for more details on this fascinating condition.
A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications
Robert Kuhn’s incredibly ambitious and comprehensive taxonomy of consciousness, “arrayed on a roughly physicalist-to-nonphysicalist landscape of essences and mechanisms.”
Could Multiple Personality Disorder Explain Life, the Universe and Everything?
Bernardo Kastrup, Adam Crabtree and Edward Kelly explore a provocative theory in this article which suggests that the universe itself may exhibit characteristics akin to dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder. This idea has at its base that consciousness is not merely a sophisticated function of the human brain but rather a fundamental aspect of the universe. According to this perspective, individual beings might be considered distinct "personalities" of a singular cosmic consciousness. This hypothesis, which Kastrup has previously expounded on in many academic papers, seeks to address the complex question of the origins of consciousness and the nature of subjective experience.
The Way of Non-Clinging (Part 2) - (Eros Unfettered - Opening the Dharma of Desire)
The late spiritual teacher Rob Burbea speaks about how the practice of non-clinging involves identifying and releasing subtle levels of craving and contraction in the mind and body, allowing for a deeper understanding of the fabrication of self and objects. By practicing awareness of craving and clinging in everyday experiences, one can cultivate a calm and open state of being, leading to a more nuanced perception of self and a sense of oneness and dissolution of self-boundaries. This release of craving also allows for a profound shift in perspective, as the level of clinging in our way of perceiving influences our experience of suffering, self, and external reality, ultimately revealing the emptiness of self and objects. By relinquishing clinging and transitioning to a practice of viewing all experiences as not self, one can gain a new way of perceiving reality, characterized by a sense of non-self and non-judgement.
 | A guest post by
|
Speaking of toxic macho-Christianity one of the leading edge examples of such is featured in these two essays:
http://www.nerdreich.com/unhumans-jd-vance-and-the-language-of-genocide
http://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2024/03/08/cpac-attendees-america-under-attack
The villain of this piece is closely associated with Opus Dei http://www.odan.org
He is highly praised by Rod Dreher who is in turn good friends with Paul Kingsnorth who makes much of his association with the First Things group the applied (macho) politics of which is described here:
http://opentabernacle.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/resurgence-of-the-catholic-political-right-under-trump
I think the biggest issue is that secularism can be awfully lonely. Churches offer group cohesion and social support that are terribly appealing and the humanist/secularist response to this has been anemic at best. Sunday Assemblies tried bringing people together with singing, but only to pop songs. You could not compare the meek sing-alongs of SA to the tear inducing rapture of the megachurch. They tried to ape the means but divested it of meaning. Humanist groups offer lectures and community events but they focus on dry ethics and legislation. Nobody ever really cries at a humanist gathering, which means it's not touching the heart in a way to anchor the mind.
Now, I'm an atheist/non-theist (depending on the question), and a member of a local humanist group and I love every one of them, but I feel the disconnect. Post-pandemic, I've self ostracized socially, and seeking a reason to rejoin the humanist flock, (there is zero chance of a Christian conversion here, I'd go Sikh first if they'd have me) but the pull isn't quite strong enough. The Sunday meetings just seem boring. And I see the videos of rapture in the pews, the tears flowing, minds clinging to the ridiculous just to maintain that chemical connection. The power of it frightens me. What could I come to believe if I gave in to that feeling? How can I bring that feeling to the real, the secular, the humanistic?
I feel that part of this is sterility in the approach to the spiritual. Spirituality, as defined in terms of a relationship with the universe not in any woo, is vital to the secular experience of meaning. (Vervaeke Part eloquently, part clumsily elucidated this in his lecture series). Secularists fight against terms that the religious leverage to great effect like grace, faith, transcendence, worship, soul, etc. Taking these terms back and applying them to a very real relationship with the nature of existence can bring poetry back to the practice of a spirituality that does not rely on judgmental cosmic agencies or wishful thinking, while embracing the noumenal, the unknowable, the uncontrollable.
Group cohesion is a very strong ramp into the transcendental, strong enough to change and form belief. Humans are much more likely to adopt the opinions and beliefs of a group with which they identify, even very ridiculous beliefs or beliefs that go against prior principles. This is anathema to many of us that value truth over all but I feel we need a bit more of it so that we don't lose those that need a relationship with other people more than they need a solid relationship with the truth (Elon Musk is a very rich but lonely man, look at what he'll believe now just for likes. You can rail against him but still pity him, he has everything but fell into the trap laid by trying to find a group that would accept him.)
I've seen family who were ardently anti gun, suddenly take up arms after joining churches and aligning with ultra-conservative viewpoints. I've seen men figure out a way to believe in God just to join their wife's faith and save their marriage, and I suspect that the current imbalance of men joining churches has more to do with the celebration of a kind of macho masculinity comically expressed by black American flags and AR-15s because they believe the lie that any kind of masculinity is somehow toxic and these groups are giving them a version they can celebrate in reaction to the judgements they perceive from "the other side".
And then there are families. I have 6 kids and no community. Joining a church, praising Jesus, putting on the magic underwear, all would possibly greatly improve living, finding my kids friends, finding them opportunities. But I'm a stubborn sonofabitch, and so are my kids. And I couldn't tolerate eating potluck casserole while listening to the religious prattle on about God, or worse, sports. I do get tired of "deconversion" stories (the secular are as fond of telling you about their loss of faith as the faithful are of telling you about finding it. People are people.) but enjoy the conversation of the secular much more, so my solution is to find a better local secular community, and lacking that, building one.