Although I don’t consider myself an atheist, if I accept the simple and common definition of atheism – the lack of belief in deities – then I fit the definition. But a lack of belief in anthropomorphic deities doesn’t imply a lack of belief in something greater than oneself. Paraphrasing from a line in “The Nines”, I believe that there are “experiences beyond what humans can experience” and “thoughts beyond what humans can think”.

DMT often brings to mind a fundamental question: How do we decide what is real and what isn’t?


Most normal people, if charged by a pink unicorn bent on causing bodily harm, would GET OUT OF THE WAY. The intellectualizing of the experience might come later, but when one’s safety is threatened, one gives one’s perceptions the benefit of the doubt.

If, while driving down a road one sees a large sinkhole in one’s path, most people will take evasive action. Regardless of how unlikely a sinkhole in this particular road might be, they won’t consider it an illusion until witnesses corroborate its existence or until they gather more evidence than their own personal experience.

There are many instances where choosing to act as if something is real, regardless of what supporting evidence one has, is the wisest life-saving choice.


And the fact is, we constantly accept things as real without any evidence beyond our personal experience. If you wander into the woods alone, do you question if every tree you see is real? Are the birds you hear real or imagined? Are the flowers you smell real? Is the bear suddenly towering over you real or the product of an over-active imagination? After running away, when you look back and no longer see the bear, can you be sure if there was a bear in the first place?


Finally, there is theoretically nothing that one can do in everyday reality that one cannot do in an imagined reality, including conducting any “tests” of reality. If confirming that other people see what I see “proves” that what I see is real, then how does confirming that DMT-entities see what I see not prove the reality of the DMT experience?

And I understand your point as well.

However, in my experience I haven't actually met many atheists trying to "convert" (or literally convert) anyone. I am not sure how general that observation is, either the one or the other way. Certainly in the media and with atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and so on one might get this impression. But there is in my opinion a subtle difference between criticizing faith based belief and really trying to convert someone. Raising criticism is what these people do (or have done, RIP Hitchens) because they see religion as a largely destructive force in society and history. I don't wish to derail this thread with that specific discussion, but there are great and weighty arguments for why this is the case. mad_banshee also makes some valid points in the post below yours.



Of course, I have never argued against that (that would be silly). I'm not even sure why you mention it? I am talking about rationalizing after the matter, not during the event where you feel your life is threatened. Are you arguing against a straw-man here, gibran2?



I agree wholeheartedly, but this was, as mentioned, never my point either. The example with the pink unicorn I think was made somewhat humorous by Olio, and were to be taken as an example of strange and unlikely experiences and how one might interpret such events.



This is true, but it wouldn't be of any practical value to evaluate every single experience one has, as I am sure you agree. It would also be impossible to live in this world if we were to question everything like this and try to find evidence for every single personal experience. I think the important thing to do here is to consider whether or not what experienced is likely, and I would say it is absolutely rational to believe that my walk in the woods the other night was likely to have occured. So no, I don't question like this all the time, but I certainly catch myself asking if this is fundamentelly real or not from time to time

But experiencing communication with entitites during DMT experiences etc, and taking them to be literal evidence for the realness of what is experienced (not the experience itself, which is undoubtedly real), is not so much a rational position to take. Such events should be questioned more carefully, because they diverge pretty clearly from what we know about this condition we're in, and from a rational viewpoint it sounds a little bit too good to be true. We also know people hallucinate things that are evidently not part of this world at all, and that the brain is perfectly able to make things pop into existence ex-nihilo, things that are generally considered not real - for example the perception of a screaming sink by the psychotic person, the pink unicorn or the gnomes singing chocolates into existence in my shed.

Would you consider such perceptions as true representation of events? If yes, why? If no, why not apply this critical thinking to DMT-experiences and the like? If you are ready to consider me meeting Elvis in my living room as some form of hallucination, then why shouldn't this apply to me meeting fantastic entities when I take my pipe and inhale DMT?

Now you may ask me in return; if I accept certain perceptions as false, or a form of hallucination, why not apply this thinking to the whole of our experience here on earth? You've asked this before, but I think at a certain point this simply becomes too absurd and meaningless. This is a question we can't answer, but it doesn't mean that it may or may not be unlikely. This world and this universe is all we've got, what does or does not lie outside (or inside) of this is out of reach, so I choose to take our shared experience here seriously, and within this specific condition we do have the ability to decide the likelihood of events and discover facts about our universe.

The final question in your post is something I will return to in the other thread we're having a similar discussion in, as you asked the same there.

Take care.

I’m thinking of starting a new thread on this subject, so I’ll be brief here and pose two basic questions – how do we define “real” and how do we determine what is real?

Most healthy people consider their everyday experiences to be “real”. Why? What criteria do we apply to our experiences to make this determination?

If we apply the same criteria to an unusual or non-ordinary experience, and the experience satisfies the criteria, why wouldn’t we consider the experience to be real?

As a scientist, if you perform the same series of experiments on two systems and get the same results, isn’t it reasonable to consider the systems equivalent? In fact, wouldn’t it be irrational to conclude otherwise?

Endlessness wrote:



This.

Essentially who is 'right' or 'wrong' is meaningless, unless people get hurt.

Of course religion has caused untold bloodshed and strife, but so has anti-religion (in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, for example). For this and other reasons, I refuse to fall into either camp. Science is far from innocent either.

I know it's a cliche but as Socrates said, "True wisdom is knowing you know nothing." Worrying yourself over whether entities and the 'Godhead' are 'real', or part of the psyche, is a pointless task IMO. We may never know. Its a beautiful mystery. And as Gibran has said, what is 'real' anyway?

I believe what my intution tells me, and frankly that's all that matters. And who am I to knock down other people's beliefs, be they religious or non-religious? As if I'm that important

What a great way to spend 20 minutes. Thank all of you for this thread.

Agnostic. I believe in believing, even if you do not believe in anything, to me that is still believing is something, which in this case is simply nothing. Be tolerant and accept others for the good things about them and their beliefs, no matter how different their beliefs are from yours.

Psy's have been a huge part of my development as a human, but at the end of the day, they merely shown me other ways of thinking and looking at the things around me, you still have to make your choices about where you use up your energy on your own away from their influence.

I am not partial to the idea of any religion simply based on the feeling that I have about religion sort of putting a box around something as awesome as existence. Anyone who is going to claim that they have all the answers and know what is what about the idea of god or the universe or consciousness or the human condition, is as little odd, to me anyways.
But, I'm all for them finding their answers and being happy with their beliefs and place in the universe.

It does not matter what you believe, the only thing that matters is what you do with what you believe.

As an Agnostic, the DMT experience and all psychedelic experiences for me at very spiritual. I see that there is more to all of this than maybe we are meant to be able to grasp as humans. I am good with that.

The wonder of it all is the best part.

I'm very curious about this too, and really not sure how one could make that definition.

I'm a natural-born skeptic, and during my first visit to the Godhead, I questioned the reality of what I was experiencing and it communicated to me that we shouldn't think in terms of what's real or not real, but simply think/KNOW whether something is TRUE... (I've added caps for emphasis and clarity in the translation, and there's still something missing -- human language isn't up to the task.)

I used to believe in the Christian God, then I stopped due to college History courses (basically being a Christian is largely a product of being born white in the US or Europe, it really depends on when and where you were born). Anyway, I became extremely scientific/Darwinian type minded, robbing me of my poetry. Since my DMT experiences (60+), I now at least have much more of a hope of an afterlife of some sort, it seems to me that these experiences more closely relate to Buddhism more than the others. I hope I am making sense as I am trying to condense this. Even though I ultimately believe that these experiences are just in my head, they are so much not like dreams and the such that I cannot say for sure, no one can so far, not even Rick Straussman.

Here is my interpretation so far:

We are 3 dimensional creatures, and can only experience reality as we know it in the 3rd dimension. It could be possible that taking substances such as DMT and LSD can access unused parts of the brain which could allow us to access higher dimension such as the 5th or 12th for example. Maybe the creatures that one experiences in this state of mind exist in higher dimensions that we cannot experience 3 dimensionally, under 'normal' circumstances, though they are always already around.

Other explanations could be night-terrors, Julian Jaynes exposition of the bicameral mind, or just dream-like states or imagination. I personally rule out dream like states or imagination because not once in my life have I ever dreamt of or imagined such creatures or places, I do not believe that I could, especially the type experienced from DMT. These experiences are beyond dreams or imagination, and is the reason why I belief that there may be some sort of actuality to these creatures.

Some of the Amazonian Shamans believe that the DMT entities are the dead. Wow, wouldn't that be crazy if that is true??, that we could access the dead by such a material magical instrument?

Sorry to revive a months old thread... but I couldn't resist

(& I missed it when it was active due to being silly busy at that time)

I almost passed on commenting here because my esteemed brethren on the thread have already said much of what I would have said anyway. And, as is common with these threads, this always boils down to a semantic wrangling on how people choose to define and use various words.

But, I thought I would throw a monkey wrench into this for kicks anyway.

1) The Definition of ATHEISM

A lot of people choose to use definitions of this word that are not entirely accurate, and even those who stick to accepted definitions tend to lean towards the implicit or explicit versions of the concept. <see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism for a loose exegesis of the broad vs. narrow, positive vs. negative, and explicit vs. implicit versions of the term>

While it is acceptable to take a broad and implicit view of the concept and stick to the whole "lack of belief in deities" definition... this is not the most commonly used version of the word. Especially when used by people who actively identify themselves as Atheists, write books on the subject, or talk about it with any regularity. Fact is that most ardent atheists believe that there are no such thing as gods, and many of them actively ridicule those who do.



You must realize that this is a belief. Not that there is anything wrong with this belief. It is, in all likelihood, at least partially true IMO. It is a difficult belief to prove, as the benchmark for weighing the good and bad of something as large, omnipresent and diverse as "religion" is highly subjective.

Furthermore, "religion" has nothing to do with the theism vs. atheism debate. It is a tangent that doesn't actually address the central issue and would be tossed out of any formal debate on grounds that the actions of a believer do not logically say anything about the validity of what they may or may not believe. All arguments in this direction fall prey to the fallacy of guilt by association or some variant of a straw man fallacy.

For me, the use of the term atheism in broad and implicit manners is unhelpful and redundant, because such an atheist would also clearly be an agnostic. Using the term so broadly renders it meaningless...

Take me for example. I find most beliefs to be quaint and lazy thinking. Beliefs need to be believed because there is not sufficient evidence for actual knowing. There are things I know (few), things I don't know... and a huge range of grey area in between that I choose not to pass judgment about and instead pay close attention in the moment and act as best as I can vis a vis the information at my disposal.

According to a broad definition of Atheism, this alone would make me an atheist. But I am clearly not an atheist, because while I lack a belief in deities... I am 99% certain that there are legions of beings in the Omniverse that are higher evolved than human beings, many of which have been called gods by our ancestors. Furthermore, I feel that my experiences allow me to embrace the "knowing" that the Universe is a conscious being. Not anthropomorphic or anything silly like that... but self-aware and creative. I find it to be so at every level macro and microscopically. (i.e. the Earth is conscious, the solar system is conscious, the galaxy is conscious etc. and likewise organs are conscious, cells are conscious... and it certainly seems that even subatomic particles have some rudimentary consciousness)

This is probably not the thread to debate my "knowing" about consciousness in the Multiverses. It is not germane to my point other than as an example that I clearly fall into various labels of theism... pantheism, panentheism, omnienteism etc. Thus, a definition of atheism that includes me is fairly well worthless.

Let us consider that the vast majority of self-identified atheists are not simply lacking in a belief about deities (and thus be agnostic)... but rather have a deep seated belief that gods don't exist. Citta has said that this is nit-picking, and that it doesn't matter. I must disagree. It is the central and most important issue here. Atheism as practiced by most people is anti-theist and very much an unproveable belief system.

I am sure my friend Citta will take umbrage with this, most atheists who like to argue the middle ground and seem reasonable do. Sorry.

The whole atheist/golf analogy is thin, as well... you must admit. A golfer holds the belief that golf is a fun and worthwhile way to pass their time. A non-golfer holds the belief that golf is not worth their time... even if they never tried it. Any non-golfer basically believes that it wasn't something that was worth learning about or exposing themselves to thus far in their life. Both beliefs are not provable or true... but subjective judgments held, either consciously or unconsciously by those who fall into the two categories. I myself am a golf agnostic. I have played it, and enjoyed my time playing it. I am unsure as to whether I enjoyed the sport all that much, or just had a blast getting wasted in a magnified version of nature and wouldn't have had more fun playing frisbee golf or archery in a similar environment.

(I am relatively certain that I would enjoy archery on a golf course more... I should see about inventing that sport. If you steal this idea PM me, because I want in.)

Ok. I will pause and let others have at my impudent assault on their semantics.

I know it can seem like beating a dead horse by having these threads, but I find these sort of conversations more fascinating than anything else on this forum, truthfully.


I don't believe in any sort of anthropomorphic "god" or "deities" really. But I do believe in a highly novel form of intelligence; infinite in complexity, that is clearly beyond what we can conceive as human beings and permeates every inch of our existence. The fact that this molecule binds to 5-HT receptors doesn't say ANYTHING in terms to what this experience is.

I'm sorry, but for anyone thinking that this experience is JUST complex biochemistry in action..you clearly have not smoked a solid dose of dmt...you just haven't. I understand that at one level there's the brain chemistry in action giving rise to an experience....but that's where the line stops on STRONG experiences. As I've said before (and many'a people here feel this)...when you have an extremely "OHH $H!%! THIS IS IT" experience with this molecule, you realize the silliness of a reductionist type approach. You realize there is SOMETHING greater than your physical being going on. It's VERY CLEAR. And if it's not clear to you...well....then like I said...you have not smoked enough in one sitting. Simple.

I try not to ascribe to a specific camp whether it be atheist, agnostic, etc. These are just labels...words...and anyone that's been in the deep end on dmt knows that these sort of labels have no substance in the face of that....NO SUBSTANCE.

oH well i suppose if 'GOD' did show himself we'd all believe.

We do know though ALL is Energy.

In my experiences i feel its like i sort of connect to or become part of some energy.

**
I believe there are secrets hidden amongst molecules.


I do believe in a 'god' creative conscious force. there has to be some sort of infinity


I think like our bodies we and everything are parts or organs to something truly infinite

Thank you mescaline-man i love what you said your theory.

I was an atheist when I tried DMT. I was no longer an atheist after the first low-dose trip.

I think we're all a part of god though, that's what DMT has said to me.
So I interpreted things like so:
God is everything, the universe.
We are all a part of consciousness, which would be the consciousness of god.

Energy.


Maybe god is too cool to fully comprehend. I never accepted that possibility until I smoked DMT.

Regardless of whether or not you believe in a god, I think dmt is probably pretty spiritual for most people. I did it the morning after a rave and had no idea what it would do.

It was a real eye opener to say the least.


The least.

Tattvamasi wrote:



Well said.

Still waiting to see if Citta or one of the other atheists on this thread will respond to this post...

Interested to hear what they might say about the various uses of the term.

There are a number of reasons we speak out against religion:

1) Being forced to either hide our disbelief (proclaiming you are an atheist in almost ANY middle eastern country is a death sentence) or being forced to abide by rules that were established for religious reasons (a number of states in the US have "dry areas" where alcohol sales are illegal. A lot of states also have restricted sales on Sunday).

2) The attack on science and history by EXTREME fundamentalists (Earth being 6,000 years old, evolution is a lie, etc.)

3) Door-to-door religious salespeople.

MOST atheists (including myself) have absolutely no issue with anyone having a private, personal belief in a God or Gods. It's when people take our position and either distort it to attack us (HOW CAN YOU BELIEVE IN NOTHING YOU'RE SO STUPID), force us to live in hiding or deal with "religious laws", and bother us while we're trying to watch NOVA that there becomes a problem.

I would personally be appalled if I found out someone from "my group" was walking around door to door and telling people "DID YOU KNOW THERE IS NO GOD?!?!". People have the right to believe (or disbelieve) whatever they please, and they also have the right to hold that belief without being bothered or talked down to.

Edit: removed redundant wording

It's not quite that simple. I'm on the fence when it comes to metaphysical experiences, mainly because, the only times I have them is when I metabolize psychedelic drugs. To say an individual hasn't truly experienced the DMT realm, because their dogma doesn't quite fit yours isn't quite fair, IMO. The experience is open to many interpretations and perspectives. If it were "JUST"(and I don't understand why so many people put it that way) complex biochemistry, does that make the experience any less real or meaningful? I think it makes it EVEN more personal and beautiful.

Who knows though, there are times where I am completely convinced that the DMT experience is about transcending the physical world, and there are times where I remain skeptical, that doesn't mean I haven't experienced this wonderful drug.

If my post implies to you, that I haven't experienced DMT, I recommend you reading my trip report, "Becoming the Being of the Totality of Earth."

This is probably one of the most intelligent, well thought out things I have ever read in my life. Great post, Hyperspace!


I agree with a lot of what you have said, 90% or more of it, in fact. However, I disagree with you on the following:



1) It is a difficult belief to prove, as the benchmark for weighing the good and bad of something as large, omnipresent and diverse as "religion" is highly subjective.

This is really a can of worms for me, personally, because everyone has SOME level of confirmation bias that they will adhere to. With that said, I think all one has to do is look at the wars, human slavery, genital mutilation, and other atrocities committed "in the name of God" to see that religion has failed mankind as a system of understanding the Universe. The problem (as I elaborated on a bit in my last post) doesn't come from a personal belief (or disbelief) in deity; it comes from Holy Permission (slavery in the Bible is a good example of this) to do evil. Now it's possible that if things were the exact opposite, Atheists would be the one persecuting believers instead of the other way around. However, atheists would have a much harder time justifying these claims of "right to do evil" than a believer would, because an atheist would not be able to default to Holy Permission.



2) For me, the use of the term atheism in broad and implicit manners is unhelpful and redundant, because such an atheist would also clearly be an agnostic. Using the term so broadly renders it meaningless...

The terms are interchangeable. This is because they both address different things. A theist believes there is a God or Gods (an atheist being the opposite of this). But an agnostic believes there is no way to prove, or know, the truth of such claims (a gnostic, again, being the opposite). It is possible to be, for example, an agnostic theist. It is also possible to be a Gnostic Atheist. Now personally, I am an agnostic atheist, which means I do not believe in a god or gods, nor do I think we will ever be able to prove that their are gods or not. But I have met Agnostic Christians before, and I've met Gnostic Atheists before as well.


3) Let us consider that the vast majority of self-identified atheists are not simply lacking in a belief about deities (and thus be agnostic)... but rather have a deep seated belief that gods don't exist. Citta has said that this is nit-picking, and that it doesn't matter. I must disagree. It is the central and most important issue here. Atheism as practiced by most people is anti-theist and very much an unproveable belief system.


Atheism isn't a belief system (nor is agnosticism a lack of belief in deities). But even if it were, it wouldn't be anymore provable or unprovable than believing in a god or gods, so I'm not exactly sure what you are getting at. You are saying it is the central and most important issue here. What is? What atheists experience during a DMT experience (which btw, is more or less what anyone else experiences)? The distinction between someone guessing there is no god vs strongly believing it? It would help a lot if you could clarify here.



Again, great post, and I look forward to your reply!

- Electric

I am an atheist. I wondered if repeated DMT experiences would change that. After multiple experiences I can say without a doubt that the spice has not changed my thinking about gods or the supernatural in any way. Certainly, there are things that seem supernatural in hyperspace, but after coming back and reflecting about what I have seen I always come to the same conclusion. It is possible that someday my opinion on this will change, maybe due to the spice, maybe for another reason. It is possible, but I don't think it will happen.

I will start with this post, and come to your direct response to my post in another post. Thank you for your thoughtful and appreciated willingness to engage on this subject btw.

So ---

I think that you (and most people who discuss this subject for that matter) are conflating two related, but very different things.

To be atheist is not synonymous with being anti-religion.

Many people are theist and anti-religion as well. In fact, there are many branches of theism that are implicitly anti-religion with some even being anti-religious. While religions tend to be founded on theistic beliefs (notable exceptions being Buddhism and many forms of Taoism), the belief or disbelief in a god or gods is not generally a deal breaker when it comes to belonging to most religions, to being apathetic on religion, or to being explicitly anti-religious.

Again, to use myself as an example. I happen to be a panentheist for the most part, with profound anti-religion leanings. I certainly don't go door to door, or picket churches & mosques... but if the subject comes up and I feel that violence or nervous breakdowns are not likely to result... I enjoy attempting to disavow people of their more ridiculous religious notions.

Many atheists enjoy this activity as well, but for slightly different reasons and with somewhat different angles of attack. And, I have seen an--admittedly small--number of atheists going door to door. Generally in places like Berkeley ;-) ... a place you might consider moving to if you don't like living amongst the religious zealots wherever you may currently live. (A red state, the middle east etc.)

I, for one, love to invite the religion peddlers who knock on my door in for a cup of coffee (if I have time) with the express purpose of befuddling them and sending them back out into the world confused and shaken in their grandiose delusions which would make them go knocking on doors. I actually really like people who have such passion and conviction. I just think they would be better served to apply their inner fire to something more productive than handing out pamphlets that annoy 90% of the people they hand them to, and have probably actually only saved a pitifully minute number of people since the dawn of time... and most of those people probably would have discovered the religion in question anyway, without the pamphlet.

The point of this is that atheism is separate from being anti-religion. The fact that atheists tend to default to anti-religion arguments when challenged on their atheism lends weight to the idea that atheism is not itself a highly defensible philosophic stance, while being anti-religion is clearly a logical response to the history of and utter ridiculousness of your typical religion.

As for your persecution idea, I will admit that many hyper-religious people persecute atheists... but not nearly as much as they persecute people who are anti their religion (theist or not). Most people killed in religious conflicts tend to be theists and religious... just not the correct branch, sect, or interpretation. You could be an atheist and choose not to rock the boat... thus going relatively undetected and avoiding any persecution. One tends to have to be explicitly anti at least one religion in order to be perceived as a heretic.