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Contents
Methodology: What is scholarship
and evidence?
Entheogenic theory of religion,
evidence vs. paradigms
Worldview can't integrate fact that
Oinos = inebriating plant mixture
There can
be too much focus on texts relative to the amount of focus on thinking and
interpretation. Both are always
needed. Many people focus
microscopically on texts. This is
important work that, if lacking, restricts knowledge of the real origin of
Christianity and Jesus, and their real original meanings. Same with research in Western esotericism.
Interpretation
and thinking, too, are crucial important work that, if relatively lacking or
impoverished, restrict knowledge of the real origin of Christianity and Jesus,
and their real original meanings.
Should most postings cite primary texts? If they currently do, more postings may be needed to balance out,
by reflecting on that research into primary texts.
I'm a huge
advocate of the idea of paradigms and self-reifying interpretive
frameworks. That lessens my trust in
the power of researching the primary texts.
I think much usage of primary texts forces them into a bad, false,
distorted paradigm. Evidence (primary
texts) suggests; it doesn't absolutely prove.
We need
more attention on how interpretive paradigms work, relative to the amount of
attention paid to primary texts. For
example, if we ought to double the work on primary texts, we ought to increase
the work on brainstorming interpretative frameworks tenfold.
Key
concepts are degree of compellingness and degree of plausibility. People do change their minds, their belief about
what happened, based on arguments and evidence -- why? What compels one to believe a mythic-only
Jesus scenario of Christian history, when that person formerly assumed or
tentatively believed in a "historical Jesus kernel" view of Christian
history?
The same
problem arises in establishing visionary plants as the main basis and main
continuing fountainhead of inspiration for the religions and systems of high
philosophy. The scenario is unthinkable
and beyond absurd in the official paradigm, but rings true with much compelling
evidence, in the paradigm which is optimized for it. From the point of view of the entheogen-theory paradigm, the
official worldview's postulations and suppositions about religion and religious
experiencing are also beyond absurd.
The
entheogen theory of the origins of religion has only recently been assembled;
in fact the basic framework or model is still being put together. We're only in the early initial stages of
formulating the hypothesis, *much less* conclusively supporting it. At this point we need many researchers and
theorists to commit to trying on this lens and interpretive framework.
Conjectural
assertion of a new hypothesis can be mistaken for a final conclusion put forth
as certain. The entheogen theory
shouldn't be taken as anything more than a "plausible and promising
hypothesis" and the entheogen scholars shouldn't be read as claiming any
more than that. Just because someone
says "the ancients used entheogens heavily" doesn't mean that that
assertion is being put forth as a certain fact -- rather, it's put forth as a
"conjectured fact".
Castaneda
is the entheogenist most guilty of dishonestly putting forth conjectural fact
as certain fact. There is a spectrum or
degrees of this distortion, with entheogenists at the other extreme always
being cautious and saying "it appears possible and interesting that the
ancients used entheogens heavily".
It should all be read as promising conjecture, at this early point.
It's
unprofitable to debate about particular points of argument. The real action happens at the level of
paradigms and interpretive frameworks.
Individual doubts about particular entheogen-religion evidence is of
little import. One can doubt the entheogen-religion
evidence of Wasson, and doubt that of Graves, and doubt that of Watts, and so
on. Yet the overall paradigm,
"entheogens are the main origin of religion", is unaffected by an
infinite number of such doubts.
A long
list of such doubts, no matter how long, fails to call into question the
entheogen explanation of the origin of religion. Listing such doubts reminds me of the Literalist Christians, how
they explain away each problem raised against their worldview. The entheogenist today must be resigned to
the fact that we have to conjecture without any forcefully persuasive
evidence. We have to take it on faith
that the evidence will come in its own sweet time.
It's the
same situation in mythic-only Christ research.
It's a matter of faith and beauty contest whether we accept the
Literalist Christian explanation of the origin of Christianity, or accept the
mystic/Gnostic/allegorist explanation.
Even science has the same problem; no evidence is absolutely compelling,
and evidence is extremely subject to interpretation -- consider Bohr/Heisenberg
Copenhagenism vs. Bohm/Einstein Hidden Variables, for example.
The
entheogen theory of the origin of religion deserves commitment because it is
simple, beautiful, and elegant. It
would explain everything effortlessly.
There is currently no evidence that will force people to accept this
theory if they are committed to some other theory of the origin of
religion. Such forcefully compelling
evidence may or may not turn up, at some time.
Look from
the plane of Theory: if the evidence doesn't fit the Theory, then too bad for
the evidence; the Theory is correct.
The entheogen theory of the origin of religion makes sense; other
theories don't make sense. And this
theory is more beautiful and elegant than the others, and more deserving of
commitment -- regardless of the evidence that we happen to have today and
tomorrow.
Researchers
of the mythic-only Jesus and of the entheogenic origin of religion shouldn't
let themselves be slowed down by anything so temporary and weak as the lack of
evidence. A superior explanation is
vastly more important than evidence, because evidence can always be plugged
into bad theories as well as good theories.
What's required for progress of knowledge is a complete appreciation for
the effective total malleability of evidence.
The eyes
deceive. Evidence can just as well lie
as tell the truth. Evidence can only
suggest a worldview or interpretive framework.
In a contest of the importance of paradigms versus evidence, paradigms
win by a long shot. A good paradigm is
worth more than thousands of pieces of evidence. Evidence is valuable, but subservient to (or less important than)
paradigms. In practice, knowledge
proceeds by the appeal of paradigms, much more than the appeal of
evidence.
Established
paradigms are impervious to evidence, just as Josh McDowell's apologetics book
"Evidence that Demands a Verdict" is a demonstration that no amount
of evidence can persuade those who are committed to preserving a paradigm. Nothing is easier than plugging any and all
evidence into whatever paradigm you happen to be committed to. Evidence *is* important, but far less so
than interpretive frameworks. One
paradigm is worth about two thousand pieces of evidence.
Cornelius
Van Til (1895-I987) was Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological
Seminary. From pages 704 -705 of THE
NEW DICTIONARY OF THEOLOGY edited by Sinclair B. Ferguson, et al. -- "Van
Til's distinctive approach is 'presuppositionalism', which may be defined as
insistence on an ultimate category of thought or a conceptual framework which
one must assume in order to make a sensible interpretation of reality: 'The
issue between believers and non-believers in Christian theism cannot be settled
by a direct appeal to "facts" or "laws" whose nature and
significance is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate. The question
is rather as to what is the final reference-point required to make the
"facts" and the "laws" intelligible. The question is as to
what the "facts" and "laws"really are. Are they what the
non-Christian methodology assumes they are? Are they what the Christian
theistic methodology presupposes they are?' (Defense of the Faith,
Philadelphia, 1967). ... Van Til vigorously criticized the traditional apologetic
approach of both Catholics and Protestants as failing to challenge the
non-Christian view of knowledge, as allowing sinners to be judges of ultimate
reality, and of arguing merely for the probability of Christianity. He
considered himself in the line of Kuyper and Bavinck in his presuppositionalism
and opposed the 'evidentialism, of Thomas Aquinas, Joseph Butler and
Warfield."
In today's
age of reason and facts, proof, rationality, and evidence, how can the
superstition and impossible miracles of Literalist Christianity be upheld? Only by being impervious to evidence.
The only
way to be impervious to evidence (rather than vulnerable to evidence) is to be
able to plug any evidence into your framework of interpretation. That's why it's nearly hopeless to expect
that we can dig up some lost ancient textual evidence that will
"threaten", in a brute-force compelling way, the Literalist
Christianity paradigm.
From the
article "Now Playing: The Gospel of Thomas" by Stephen J. Patterson,
in the December 2000 issue of Bible Review
(http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BR/brd00thomas.html): "No text, no matter how dramatic its contents, could
"bring down the church as we know it." In the Gospel of Philip, a third-century apocryphal text well
known among scholars, Jesus is said to have "kissed" Mary Magdalene
"on the lips." If that didn't bring down the house, I can't imagine
what would!"
The
Gnostic gospels *will* likely eventually cause Literalist Christianity to
collapse into a heap of rubble. I'm not
asserting that evidence is of no import and completely inconsequential. The power of evidence has been greatly
overestimated and the power of paradigms -- interpretive frameworks -- has been
greatly *under*-estimated.
We used to
think that a handful of pieces of evidence -- or maybe a larger number -- would
be enough to change one's worldview.
But now it's clear that it takes more like two thousand pieces of
evidence to even *begin* to seriously start shaking a paradigm.
We need to
acknowledge that evidential proof goes both ways: Literalist Christians begin
by adopting that paradigm, and then claim that there's not enough evidence to
warrant adopting a different paradigm.
There isn't enough evidence to compell people to adopt the entheogen
theory of the origin of religion, but there isn't enough evidence to compell
rejecting that theory, either.
It's early
and we don't have *nearly* enough evidence to support rejecting or adhering to
the entheogen theory. Same with the mythic-only Jesus theory: it's still quite
early and we're only beginning to clearly formulate the hypothesis, paradigm,
or interpretive framework. It's too
early to talk of compelling evidence that can forcefully persuade inveterate
doubters.
In the
domain of mythic-experiencing allegory and the study of religious experiencing,
and the nature and origin of religion, we're now in the Age Of Hypothesis
Formation, not the Age Of Compelling Evidence.
So all writings about shamanism, entheogens, Christian origins,
religious experiencing, and the mind are *all* conjectural -- not just the
entheogen theory of the origin of religion.
*All* the
books about mind, cognition, shamanism, mystery-religion, religious
experiencing, and ego death (and quantum mechanics) are conjectural and subject
to revision and obsolescence. It took
centuries for philosophy of science to realize that all science is conjectural,
interpretive, and subject to profound revision.
We are
still in the midst of the Dark Ages, only beginning to struggle to wake up --
strangely, despite assumptions of Progress, this situation seems nothing
new. As always, the apocalyptic
revelation of world enlightenment is dawning, as it has so often been. In this Web Age, the Truth will stand up
taller and manifest more of its complete shape than the many previous times it
has managed to arise more or less before being suppressed by the aristocrats in
league with the clergy.
The
inability of the official worldview to integrate the known fact that
"oinos" meant "inebriating plant mixture"
>http://www.google.com/search?q=%22mixed+wine%22+greek
-- 500 hits
>It's
pivotally important that we show that "mixed wine" 500 BCE-500 CE was
understood to be an entheogenic mixture.
It would be good if people could start searching the Web for
confirmation.
The
Christian abstinence Web pages sometimes portray the ancients as watering down
their "wine" so as not to get drunk.
Other times, they contradict that view by stating that the Greeks felt
undiluted wine was too strong for mortals to drink (it would kill them or drive
them insane). You can trust and count
on Christian apologists to provide very distorted clues.
It is
trivial to prove concensus that the ancients mixed "herbs" and
"spices" into their "wine", and that their
"wine", whatever it was, was certainly entirely different from our
wine. It is extremely deceiving to use
the word "wine" for the ancients -- that's like calling Absinthe
"wine", or calling liquid LSD "wine" -- a gross misrepresentation. Even the phrase "wine-based
psychoactive mixture" may be misleading, conjuring a picture of today's
wine with mashed mushrooms, hash oil, and opium added.
Far closer
would be the connotations of "elixir" instead of "mixed
wine" or "wine". A good
compromise bridge term would be "wine-elixir".
At the
seder, symposium, love feast, or other sacred ritual meal, the ancients drank
several cups of elixir.
"Wine" as conjured up in today's mind is wholly
irrelevant. When two things become so
different as today's wine and the "wine" of the ancients, it is a lie
and total misunderstanding to use the same word. So I'd say "wine -- or rather *elixir*"... The ancients
*didn't* drink "wine"; they drank *elixir*. "Wine" or "oinos" in fact was: a mixture that
included alcohol and inebriating plants.
There's
really not much contention about this -- instead, there is a bad habit of mind,
from a shoddy mental framework, of reading "wine" as today's wine,
when scholars actually know better and know that "wine" was a general
term meaning a mixture that included alcohol and inebriating plants.
Definitions
of "elixir": A sweetened aromatic solution of alcohol and water,
serving as a vehicle for medicine. Philosophers' stone. A substance believed to
maintain life indefinitely. Elixir of life. A substance or medicine believed to
have the power to cure all ills. An underlying principle. From Greek xrion, desiccative powder, from
xros, dry, a dry powder. A tincture
with more than one base; a compound tincture or medicine, composed of various
substances, held in solution by alcohol in some form. A liquor capable of
transmuting metals into gold; also, one for producing life indefinitely. The refined spirit; the quintessence. Any
cordial or substance which invigorates. The grand elixir, to support the
spirits of human nature.
If the
godman says "Drink this wine to receive the Holy Spirit and transcendently
unite with me", we should read "Drink this mixture that includes
alcohol and inebriating plants to receive the Holy Spirit and transcendently
unite with me". Or "Drink
this elixir of inebriating plants to receive the Holy Spirit and transcendently
unite with me". The correct and
perfect translation of "oinos" into today's vocabulary is
"elixir of inebriating plants".
Research
on the Web will dig up a lot of nonsense but it will confirm this. The ancients definitely didn't drink what we
call "wine"; they definitely did drink elixirs of inebriating plants. The only real question is how this obvious
and once-common knowledge has become so suppressed to the degree it has. Like most esoteric knowledge, it was never
wholly suppressed, despite the claims of official and conventional thinking to
that effect.
The true
understanding of what "oinos" meant -- elixirs of inebriating plants
-- was only more or less suppressed from official knowledge.
Knowing
the official and the esoteric paradigms, I can predict before doing more
serious research what such research will turn up. Semi-ambiguous clues and hints, with the official Literalist
Christians working hard to either show that the good Christians greatly watered
down their wine to avoid any psychoactive effects, or that the evil Pagans
liked strong wine... the official Christians have no coherent story -- it's a mess.
It's a
messy, rotten, heavily distorted research topic, as frustrating as it is
positively challenging. Researching
this is just like researching the true history of entheogen use and the true
origin of Christianity, and for me, the true nature of High Classic Rock, or
for conspiracy theorists, the truth about political scheming and
disinformation. It's disgusting and
frustrating how the truth has been distorted so far out of proportion that you
have to cross your eyes to see it even when you know what it is.
We know
that oinos was for the ancients was elixir of inebriating plants, yet even
knowing that, it's tough to find confirmation.
Why is there so little -- or is there actually tons of confirmation, but
scholars are simply not used to looking for it? So we can ask why it *seems like* there is so little confirmation
that oinos was generalized elixir of inebriating plants.
Why does
it *seem like* there is little confirmation that "oinos" was the
generalized term for any elixir of inebriating plants? Because the dominant paradigm blurs the
reality and has put in place a vivid substitute, today's word
"wine". The official
connotations of "wine" act to block us from *building up* the correct
connotations; the dominant paradigm prevents one from perceiving the suppressed
paradigm.
The
elements for confirming the correct connotations of "oinos" are
present but undeveloped, un-built-up, in contrast to the official connotations,
which have been fully built up. A
parallel is the way the assumption of a historical Jesus actively blocks and
prevents us from considering the mythic meaning of the godman.
Our
supposed paucity of evidence for ancient entheogen use is *not* primarily a
matter of lacking "evidence", but rather, lacking the conceptual framework,
paradigm, and perspective, the connotation matrix, to recognize and assemble
the great amount of evidence we do have.
Smoking gun? We have a hundred
smoking guns, forcefully compelling proofs -- if we could only perceive
them.
Paradigms
can blind, paradigms can reveal. So it
is actually *more* important to work on our paradigms than on collecting
"proof" -- it's as though we already are wallowing in an extreme
overabundance of proof and evidence, but lacking the right paradigm, that
evidence is completely invisible: our wrong paradigm has systematic blind
spots. Our official paradigm has a huge
blind spot when it comes to perceiving that oinos was mixtures of inebriating
plants.
In
practice, this means that even when the official mind sees that oinos is a
mixture of inebriating plants, it still *doesn't* see that; that perception
doesn't register; in one ear, out the other -- it leaves or builds up no
impression and we immediately revert back to the official connotation matrix,
assuming oinos = wine.
The same
dynamic shows why it takes 3 (or 7) exorcisms to cast out the ego demon;
multiple altered-state sessions to be able to mentally retain the transcendent
mental worldmodel rather than having it inexorably slip away as we fall back
into sin and incarnation and the sinful fleshly body (the deluded egoic mental
worldmodel), reverting back to losing our head again, having not successfully
attained the perseverance of sainthood yet.
You have
to *hammer* the official worldview repeatedly and relentlessly, like a powerful
monster on a high level of a video game, with the fact:
"Oinos"
meant not fermented grape juice, but a mixture of highly inebriating plants!
You have
to become rapidly forceful, overemphasizing the point, before the fact starts to
finally *register* and *stick* in the mind that's blinded by the official
mental worldmodel in which oinos means our "wine".
So the
"evidence" we have on the Web about oinos does include the fact that
"oinos" meant not fermented grape juice, but a mixture of highly
inebriating plants -- but that's just a mere impotent fact, totally
overdominanted by the wrong *paradigm*.
Facts are impotent; paradigms are all-powerful. We have the mere impotent, meaningless,
empty fact about oinos, but we utterly lack the potent and all-important
*paradigm* or worldmodel about oinos.
This is
comparable to the supposedly determinist Calvinists who adopt the angelic
principle of determinism, and yet adhere to an overall worldmodel that is
thoroughly corrupted by the devilish freewillist way of thinking. I'm becoming extreme and dogmatic about
this: worldviews are *everything*, facts and evidence are *nothing*. It takes several thousand facts to even
begin to rattle a paradigm or mental worldmodel or Wilsonian "reality tunnel".
There is
no possible evidence that can persuade an insane deluded person; all evidence
will undergo transformation or dismissal in order to preserve the worldmodel
and interpretative and observational framework. Yes, admittedly some people are persuadable to convert
worldmodels -- that's metanoia, repentance, conversion, and it's not
uncommon.
But we
should keep the extreme strength and resiliance of worldmodels firmly in mind
to answer the question of how scholars can so well know what oinos meant and
still fail to understand and remember it.
The truth about oinos is rediscovered again and again but it slips off
the official worldview like Teflon -- it refuses to stick; it cannot be
integrated and incorporated; it's an alien fact.
The official
paradigm is completely unable to retain the fact about oinos; only the
suppressed paradigm can incorporate the fact about oinos. The Web reflects this inability to
incorporate the "known" fact about oinos which is so well known and
yet so completely unknown due to incompatibility between that fact and that
worldview.
The
misunderstanding of oinos is compatible with the official worldview and so by
damn, that is what oinos means in the official worldview, never mind the facts
that scholars know.
The correct
understanding is provably correct, and even uncontroverted -- but too bad; it's
incompatible with the official worldview and therefore will not, cannot
possibly be registered, comprehended, grokked, or retained -- it can be
understood as an isolated island of fact, but it cannot be integrated, so the
worldview reverts to thinking "wine" even though the fact of
"inebriating plant mixture" is so-called "known" and
"accepted as fact".
Our
isolated fact-mind knows "oinos" is "inebriating plant mixture",
but our full-scale worldmodel nevertheless cannot but persist in thinking
"oinos" means what we call "wine".
It is
essential that we strive to gather evidence for the suppressed paradigm. However, it's essential to realize that
paradigms are primary and evidence is only secondary, and a distant second at
that. That's perhaps my biggest gripe
about the mode of discussion at the JesusMysteries discussion group -- they
foolishly assume that evidence is primary, and that the worldview follows the
evidence, when in fact the worldview is primary, and the evidence follows the
worldview.
Discussion
or handling of *evidence* must take place within a more dominant discussion or
handling of *paradigms*. Otherwise,
what always is bound to happen is that all evidence is merely shuffled around
within whatever paradigm (worldview) happens to already be dominant -- the
"oinos is wine" paradigm or the "historical Jesus" paradigm
or the freewillist-egoic paradigm.
The
Calvinists and Pelagians debate about determinism and freewill without
discussing paradigms, and therefore both sides end up inadvertantly reinforcing
whatever the dominant paradigm is: egoic freewillist thinking, which the mere
adoption of an abstract, dry doctrine of determinism is helpless to shake (though
I suspect such shaking was going on in the tent camp revival meetings).
Those who
believe there was a historical Jesus and those who don't, conduct their debate
without discussing paradigms, and therefore both sides end up inadvertantly
reinforcing whatever the dominant paradigm is.
We end up with people who assert the "mythic-only Jesus"
position while retaining the whole gist of the official story of Christian
history.
They
attempt to negate one item in a system while neglecting to even consider making
wholesale changes throughout the system -- which would amount to tossing
everything we thought we knew about Christian origins into the garbage can and
starting from a completely fresh slate -- not just questioning everything, but
fully rejecting everything and seeking anew to understand what happened.
The
problem with our usual meaning of "question everything" is that we
have a strong habit of questioning only one aspect of a paradigm at a time, and
you can never really change a paradigm one piece at a time. Most spirituality, which Wilber calls merely
"translative, not transformative", involves exactly such a habit of
retaining ten thousand elements of a paradigm, while seeking to revise only a
few at a time.
Yes, we
must "question everything", but with a much more sweeping
understanding of the scope of "everything", and a much deeper meaning
of "question". We must
*extremely* "question", *extremely* "everything". Most people's idea of questioning everything
amounts to proposing that three of the Disney characters are just fictional,
while taking for granted, without even thinking of questioning, that the rest
really existed.
They don't
get it. *All* the pantheon of Disney
characters are fictional. Most people
balk at questioning more than 3 elements of their accustomed worldview. But the official worldview is *far* more
distorted and alienated from reality than most people are even able to consider
possible -- almost to the degree of the movie The Matrix, where the real world
is people in hibernation in a machine, while they believe the official
propaganda that says they're living normal lives in late modernity.
Today's
official worldview about oinos, entheogens, and the origin of Christianity is
almost that far from reality. No wonder
we are incapable of hanging onto and integrating the "well-known
fact" that oinos was a mixture of highly inebriating plants.
We have a
well-stocked vending machine (the official paradigm) and a handful of
incompatible foreign coins (established, correct, widely accepted facts), but
we cannot use the coins in this machine; cannot incorporate these isolated
facts with the incompatible paradigm we hold.
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