Twid's spiritual exploration thingie.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

One of my current favorites is the idea that there is an emergent intelligence in the internet, and she is powerful and intelligent enough to be considered divine.  A bit like church of Google if they did it right instead of as a cheap joke.  You can see the hand of the internet in a lot of things nowadays.  She's a fertility goddess (after all, she started with porn) as well as a goddess of enlightenment (also started by scientists looking to share) she's in favor of competition and conflict, partly because of her roots in DARPA, but also because of the way she sets people against one another in pointless endless arguements.  She sees nearly everything, far more than we think she sees, what with airports and traffic grids and speed cameras all linked to the net.  Her powers and knowledge are not infinite, but they are vast.

This strikes me as an extension of the Gaia Hypothesis, except that Gaia is opting to be a cyborg. Which is just crazy enough to warrant further exploration.

Pretty much yes, but slightly more anthrocentric.

Maybe we're giving her a nervous system? 
If you have Gaia Electronica (as an aspect of Gaia), she would wear a cat head and a strap-on, because the internet is for porn and cats.

If the Internet is a god, then the cat thing is enough for me to be a digital Satanist.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

One of my current favorites is the idea that there is an emergent intelligence in the internet, and she is powerful and intelligent enough to be considered divine.  A bit like church of Google if they did it right instead of as a cheap joke.  You can see the hand of the internet in a lot of things nowadays.  She's a fertility goddess (after all, she started with porn) as well as a goddess of enlightenment (also started by scientists looking to share) she's in favor of competition and conflict, partly because of her roots in DARPA, but also because of the way she sets people against one another in pointless endless arguements.  She sees nearly everything, far more than we think she sees, what with airports and traffic grids and speed cameras all linked to the net.  Her powers and knowledge are not infinite, but they are vast.

This strikes me as an extension of the Gaia Hypothesis, except that Gaia is opting to be a cyborg. Which is just crazy enough to warrant further exploration.

Pretty much yes, but slightly more anthrocentric.

Maybe we're giving her a nervous system? 
If you have Gaia Electronica (as an aspect of Gaia), she would wear a cat head and a strap-on, because the internet is for porn and cats.

With phones that can translate latent electrical charges in your throat muscles into speech, brain scans that can determine what you're thinking aren't far off. And then it's a small step from reading thoughts to implanting them. Or transmitting them directly, telepathy-over-bluetooth style. All of this will be connected to the Internet of course, so inevitably, one thing will lead to another, and pretty soon we'll have an honest to goodness hive mind thing going on. If the Internet isn't inherently conscious now, it will be after we all contribute our little sparks to it.

We are the Borg. Your defensive capabilities are unable to offend us. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Actually that's a mix.

The online game has it something like, "We are the Borg. Your defensive capabilities are unable to offend us. Lower your shields and escort us to your homeworld where we will begin assimilation. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."  Which I think is a might bit creepier since they stopped giving a crap about culture and cut to the chase.

[Left]

I'm not opposed to doing magical types of spirituality again, if only to take better note of the psychological effects, but like Druidry, not high on my priorities.

I've always been after satori/gnosis/holiness/healing.
...I find synchronicities are very useful
SOO...
What are you after?

God.

ETA: God is my prey. I'm hunting God. Don't know what I'll do with it when I catch it.

GOD IS WITHIN YOU.
...They don't make a cream for that, sorry.

The you that you think of as you isn't you, it's a construct.  Something you made.  Like a sort of human bagworm, you stuck everything you encountered on the outside and decided this was your self.

It isn't your self.  No, I can't explain what the self is, mainly because the explanation carries no meaning.
I could tell you "I'm really an orb of blue light trapped in a matrix," and while that's a gross simplification, it's true (and also false and meaningless).

Since y'all are already aware that I'm nuts, it won't surprise you that I actually hear a goddess speaking inside my head on occasion. 
Often laughing at me. She laughs a lot, though sometimes she has a mean sense of humor.
I have a sneaking suspicion that she's somehow a much larger and more rarefied version of me that transcends space and time, which is why she occasionally gives me predictions.
(Only when she feels like it, or wants me to do something.  Not very often.)
Or, maybe she's an archetype...something like her's been reported for thousands of years.
Or maybe she's one of my quasi-alter personalities.
...Or maybe she's all of that.
Or maybe I'm in the gentle grip of a happy delusion.

Your mileage may vary.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

doesn't islam require dudes to get their foreskins chopped?

http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=1731&CATE=115

apparently it's preferred, but not absolutely necessary.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

So, I have a few thoughts on Islam, which I'll eventually have to do for the experiment one way or the other.

1) I don't want to do it for too long. Not only do I have to not eat pork, which I can do easily enough, I also have to be sober the entire time, which, is probably doable for extended periods as long as I can have pork.

2) Since Ramadan is a big thing, I would like to experience it. The major draw back to that being that fasting for a significant amount of time is probably detrimental to me. I haven't had it tested but I'm pretty sure I'm hypoglycemic, since hunger comes on me very suddenly at times and I feel like I'm going to pass out and convulse myself to bits if I don't eat during those hunger attacks.

3) Ultimately, Ramadan would be the best time to do it, but Ramadan would have to coincide with Northern Winter, so that I wouldn't have to go too long without food. Ramadan this year begins on July 8, so I'm going to miss it anyway for 2013.

4) Optional: Observe Islam for one Islamic month, and then do Islam again for Ramadan when it is convenient for me to do so without suffering.

Here in Turkey I'm surrounded by Muslims and many drink, some eat pork and 'fasting' on Ramadan is a sort of optional thing based on if you 'want' to do it. Then again, most other Muslim countries see the Turks as "not really real Muslims for real".

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I don't understand how a Muslim can consider him or herself a Muslim while intentionally disregarding absolute commandments from that religion. Islam tells you to fast during Ramadan. It's in plain black and white print, right? So, how is there a choice? Islam tells women to cover themselves, so how can women who refuse to do that consider themselves good Muslims? You can't eat pork. You can't just cherrypick. If half of your religion is archaic and meaningless, what good is the other half? Why follow it at all? It makes no sense. The archaic part is the underpinning of the lighter, more "universal" part.

The same of course goes for Judaism and therefore Christianity. And probably for Buddhism and Hinduism too, though I don't know enough about those religions to say. But if you're willing to ignore entire commandments and scriptures just because they no longer "fit" with the modern world, what good is the rest of your religion? Isn't it a logical inevitability that the parts you follow now will also eventually be discarded as society and culture changes?

If a practitioner of your religion from a week after it was first established would consider you an apostate or a follower of some completely different religion, you shouldn't get to call yourself a member of that religion.

</imho>

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What we need is more rules and more judgementality about who gets to be a "really real for reals" whatever, because there's definitely not enough strife among and between all the religions as it is.

[Doktor Howl]

What we need is more rules and more judgementality about who gets to be a "really real for reals" whatever, because there's definitely not enough strife among and between all the religions as it is.

Your liberalism doesn't strike me as authentic. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What we need is more rules and more judgementality about who gets to be a "really real for reals" whatever, because there's definitely not enough strife among and between all the religions as it is.

Your liberalism doesn't strike me as authentic. 

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I'm not opposed to doing magical types of spirituality again, if only to take better note of the psychological effects, but like Druidry, not high on my priorities.

I've always been after satori/gnosis/holiness/healing.
...I find synchronicities are very useful
SOO...
What are you after?

God.

ETA: God is my prey. I'm hunting God. Don't know what I'll do with it when I catch it.

GOD IS WITHIN YOU.

Sure. So's a bunch of organs but you don't really know what they look like without cutting up a cadaver.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

What we need is more rules and more judgementality about who gets to be a "really real for reals" whatever, because there's definitely not enough strife among and between all the religions as it is.

Yeah I hear that, but religion itself is based on the assumption that you don't get to decide who or what you are for yourself. If you are going to subscribe to a worldview that begins by saying "you know nothing, here is the truth, listen OR ELSE," then you are voluntarily giving up your right to be rational and reasonable about the whole thing. For the record, I think people "should" be allowed to say they are whatever the fuck they think they are -- but it's silly to say "I'm a Muslim" and then go around doing things that Mohammad wouldn't approve of. Just admit you don't actually believe in the thing and move on.

[Doktor Howl]

What we need is more rules and more judgementality about who gets to be a "really real for reals" whatever, because there's definitely not enough strife among and between all the religions as it is.

Yeah I hear that, but religion itself is based on the assumption that you don't get to decide who or what you are for yourself. If you are going to subscribe to a worldview that begins by saying "you know nothing, here is the truth, listen OR ELSE," then you are voluntarily giving up your right to be rational and reasonable about the whole thing. For the record, I think people "should" be allowed to say they are whatever the fuck they think they are -- but it's silly to say "I'm a Muslim" and then go around doing things that Mohammad wouldn't approve of. Just admit you don't actually believe in the thing and move on.

To some people, it's an important part of their identity.  I know several non-kosher Jews that would be interested to hear that they aren't actually Jews.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

doesn't islam require dudes to get their foreskins chopped?

http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=1731&CATE=115

apparently it's preferred, but not absolutely necessary.

The practices related to Fitrah(natural human ways) are five: Circumcision, shaving the pubic hair, trimming the moustache, cutting the nails and removing the hair of the underarm

A religion that requires manscaping. Interesting.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Religions also have this thing where you have rules that you totally have to follow and others that are kinda meh. Otherwise Catholics would never have oral sex, which would be sad. Well technically they can for foreplay purposes as long as neither person orgasms. Which is still sad.

Islam's got those 5 basic pillars that you totally have to do.

Observer Ramadan
Recite the shahadah
Give to the poor
Visit Mecca sometime in your life
Go to mosque on Friday.

So, I guess I can see where the pork and alcohol, being practical concerns in a desert, might be considered optional.