atheism and ghosts.

I found your story very interesting and enlightening. Thankyou for sharing with us. Is the tail significant in the Natives tradition? Im interested in the animal part versus a stone or Native flower etc. Does this fit with the man you were honouring's tradition? Thanks valley wolf.

 

Thank you Rosehippy for your comments. I wondered if there was any significance to the tail, or even what I should do with it. I could not ever find anything specific about a tail----in fact the tail was not even that spectacular. It appears to be a squirrel tail, but it is not as bushy as the squirrels that run around the neighborhood. I have see numerous pictures of medicine men with tails hanging off of their garments. But, why a tail? I still don't know, but have more or less decided that it is not what it is that is significant, but how I received it. As soon as I picked it up, I understood that it was an answer to my years of questioning, and that I had no more reason to question.

As far as the Indian I was honoring, there is a lot of question as to what tribe he came from. The Ute, and the Arapaho were the most common tribes that lived in the area. But Lakota, Cheyenne and other tribes came into the area to hunt. And I have heard from various Indians that the gift or message that one recieves like that is unique to each person---and being that it was gven to me, the meaning is something I have to understand.

 

Yes, thanks for sharing that. It makes me sad to know that some people won't read it simply because it's a long post.

You know, I think there is a point at which some people cling to disbelief with more fanaticism than is rationally justifiable.

It's been very interesting and telling to see how my original question has been modified in more than a few cases to fit in with certain beliefs (or perhaps I should say disbeliefs). That's not a criticism, but I do find it interesting. I suppose when I use the term "atheist" to some it means a person who doesn't belief in a Christian-Judeo God, while others read it in the broad sense that I intended. But in hindsight, maybe I should have used the term "non-spiritualists" or "anti-mystic".

The scenario I meant to present was intended to be provocative, but again - the thing I take away most from many of the responses so far is that people who do not believe in "ghosts" or "spirits" appear to be as offended by supernatural belief as fanatically spiritual or religious are offended by disbelief. So I'm left to wonder if it's possible that secularism has become as dogmatic as some religions?

Is it more insane to believe what your eyes see, even when you're educated not to, and your mind revolts against it, than to assume insanity?

 

Thank you for your kind words Jamgrassphan. I found this thread interesting as well for the same reasons. Yes, there is certainly dogma in the secular world, just as you have within religions. I have a friend who got a degree in anthropology and spent some time working on digs in Egypt. He has some interesting stories. You would be amazed at how dogmatic Egyptologists are. You can come up with all kinds of evidence to prove a theory that is contrary to what Egyptologists believe, and you would have to fight tooth and nail to defend it, and could all too easily be shamed out of a position in archeological academia. Yet there is a long history of the older beliefs being turned over in Egyptology. Its not how much evidence points to the new theory, or how much more likely the new theory is to be correct, but how much the proponent of that theory is able to persevere against the established and stubborn dogmatism.

Your question definitely touched a nerve with some people, just as if you had gone into a rural part of Saudi Arabia, and asked, “What if Allah was a woman?” That is because both questions tie into the unifying myth of the culture. (I am not using myth in the sense of a fairy tale or falsehood, but in the sense of a guiding story that reflects subconscious symbolism in a manner that can be consciously understood). The unifying myth represents truth to the culture that it gives meaning to. Christianity was the unifying myth of Western culture before the Age of Reason. Some postmodern theorists argue that the Age of Reason, and the Age of Modernism took away the unifying myth. Others argue that the rationalism and empirical science replaced religion as the unifying myth. The fact that people are so dogmatic over rationalism and science suggests to me that science did become the new unifying myth, and that its influence as a guiding or unifying myth peaked between the 1930’s and the 1950’s.

But rationalism did not fill man’s existential needs, and took the humanism out of social policies, the cultural direction, and the relationship between man and the State, his fellow men, and even with nature. It failed as a unifying myth, and we now find ourselves in this period of postmodernism, still heavily influenced by objectivistic rationalism, but struggling to find a new unifying myth. The problem is that it has to be a ‘truth’ as we understand it, in order for it to be accepted. After the Age of Reason and the Modern Age, religion can no longer fill that void. (Though the New Age movement tries—grabbing at older spiritual traditions left and right, which become a parody of the original tradition after being filtered through the rational perspectives of the Modern world). But history tells us that when a culture loses its unifying myth, that culture is doomed to collapse.

Dogma is certainly a key part of this process of decay of the unifying myth. Dogma takes away the deeper meaning of why, and replaces it with cold pragmatism and blind process. And of course---Part of the magic of the hippy movement was that it was a revolt against dogma---with a society-shaking open-minded WHY?

 

ghost : ancestor

having a vital ancestor myth seems quite
the good glue . but suppose your native myth
has been shredded . one thing to do is touch
the earth , existential place .

i would not like to touch George Washington .

 

Thanks for answering my question. I have enjoyed sharing your experience, I appreciate the time it took to write such a long post. Personal experience is invaluable, it must have been quite a remarkable.