"Other ways of knowing," aka Different Cognitive Styles

[NoOneMan]

81. Where else are they to turn?

To the shamanistic traditions that civilizations has eradicated, due to their non-conducive nature that conflict's with the goals of modern man? Or to the familiar, culturally acceptable church down the street that has canned theodicies to explain the people's suffering--previously ruled as benign or beneficial for growing the machine?

The popularity of a belief is more indicitive of its acceptable nature to civilization than its truth (refer to the logical fallacy of appealing to popularity).

I think it is a meaningful, natural human experience for many, many people

Religious spiritiuality may be meaningful, but I seriously doubt that it allows people to have unadulturated, unfiltered experiences that impart the intended knowledge onto the individual; rather, it will reinterpret the knowledge according to the bounds of the religion (which is bounded by the containing culture).

What has manifested from religion is a civilization on the precipice of disaster from ecological breakdown, despite its experiences and knowledge of its adherents. We live in the complete antithesis of what is advocated by simpler, shamanistic experiences that civilization has widely rejected. Sure, religious experience may be meaningful, and even useful insofar as the lessons advance the goals of civilization. But those goals may very well be contradictory to the intended, raw meaning of the experiences and leading to our impending extinction (or evolutionary bottleneck).