A short entry this week...
This is an embarrassing bit. For a while, I thought that I was experiencing ‘supernatural’ events; sounds, coincidences, apparitions, and the like. What can I say? I’m a child of my time.
My first ‘experience’ was an auditory phenomenon. It happened when I was about 12 years old. At home alone, I heard (or thought I heard) footsteps descending the stairs in a hurry. The stairway was to the attic of our small home and the huge ‘trap-door’ was firmly shut. It startled me and I leapt to a conclusion; a false one.
Other times that I would include in ‘supernatural events’ was when I was about 20 years old living in Nashville with the ‘adepts’ in the nascent cult which I mentioned above. The ongoing talk in our house for days was on spirits and ghosts. We talked about methods of ‘seeing’ them as ghosts and spirits were purported by some to be ‘everywhere’. Sitting in the living room, I thought I saw the silvery outline of a spirit descending the stairs. (Again with the stairs!) The ‘vision’ was confirmed rather half-heartedly by one or more of the ‘adepts’. Again, a leap to a conclusion. Again, a false one.
My sisters (Bless their little hearts!) have reported ‘seeing at a distance’, ESP, the foretelling of future events and ‘dreams’ which prophesized events, usually delivered by deceased family members. I usually just sit quietly and listen to the guff without comment. I’ve concluded that they perceive themselves as ‘special’ by claiming such extra-sensory rot.
These incidences, on re-telling, are totally bland and innocuous but when they occurred to me, they each were accompanied by an emotional component which amplified the experience. That emotional component (fear!) is what people hold on to so as to rationalize their experiences. Falsely, IMHO.
I have intentionally avoided any of the experiences which would be attributed to the ingestion of mind altering chemicals; alcohol, psilocybin, mescaline, THC, LSD, etc. Those experiences, which many others attest to being supernatural in nature, will be dealt with later in a section entitled ‘Psychedelics’. As intimated, a seeker seeks and I was a ‘seeker’. There were answers to the mysteries of the world and I hoped to find them. I know better now.
Adventures in Philosophy
Philosophy is like a game so complicated that few want to take the time to learn the byzantine rules and opaque terminology and which, moreover, never produces a winner.
Philosophy is a stately dance; I’ve never learned the steps and detest the music.
When I attended Springfield College in Illinois (SCI) at the age of 23, I signed up for a philosophy course. I attended two class sessions but never purchased the text books; I determined that the class would not provide what I sought which was more than the semester hours the class offered. The professor was a priest; the Order of St Viator. Since SCI was a Catholic college, most of the instructors were clergy. I felt on common ground as I knew of this order from attending Bishop McNamara High School in 1964.
(Father Mayer (remember him?)was a Viatorian, BTW.)
The first class was a basic introduction to constructing syllogisms. During the second meeting of the class, however, the professor, a Viatorian priest, laid out a simple syllogism – I don’t recall the exact syllogism but it was on god. I could sense that the priest’s intention was to prove the existence of the god of the Roman Catholic church and more exactly, the god of the Jesuits and Ignatius Loyola. I balked at the proposition of spending an entire term preparing and testing for that eventuality. I dropped the course. I was not going to subject myself to studying and entangling myself in learning an invalid argument for the existence of Loyola’s god.
I did not define myself as an atheist at the time; I was more of a ‘free-thinker’. As I said before; being a Catholic was not de rigeur at the time. Being a ‘seeker’ and an iconoclast was the meme of the era. Pyramid power and crystal amulets were still on the fringes and in our future; on-coming lights in a dark tunnel.
Not to brag, I usually did quite well in classes where the subjects interested me and which were taught by interesting, thinking teachers. In the USA, however, tertiary education is expensive. Being an aging student with few prospects and growing debt, remaining in college was a trial. Rather ironically (or fortuitously) I happened to read ‘Deschooling Society’ a book by Ivan Illich (ironically a Roman Catholic priest) which played a huge role in dismissing the need for adhering to the strictures of academic study. That might well be a time when the book was ‘told’ by its cover. I chose it for the very reason I needed to forestall
any regrets or resentment for ending my time in college. In short, I left the ivy-ed halls.
Since then, I’ve held philosophy at arm’s length. Watching the Atheist Experience with Matt Dillahunty lead me back to the baroque and byzantine dance of philosophy; the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the philosophical fallacies, metaphysics and the numerous –ologies (e.g. epistemology, tautology, teleology, ontology, etc.) that keep my head spinning while looking for an exit from the unfalsifiable mind-game of making sense of the senseless.
Conclusion: It makes no sense to try to make sense of the senseless.
Likewise, it is senseless to expect sense from those who have abandoned good sense.
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