Posted: Jul 18, 2017 5:58 am
When I was in primary school, back in the 70's, I had a very vivid dream that I was flying through the air head-first and my intent was to crash into an aeroplane. The next day I was watching TV and the bad guys had taken control of a newly developed missile which worked by remote control video with a camera in the nose, and they were guiding it to hit an airliner. The screen switched to a missile-eye view of basically what I had dreamed.
I felt a bit weird about that for a long time. Much later I realised I may have seen an advert and forgotten about it.
Or it could have been God telling me to - feel awkward?
Bear in mind that humans are biased towards seeing patterns, this is a great survival mechanism, enabling us to recognise trends and act accordingly and proportionally, but it also means we see phantom patterns because we can't accept that there are no patterns when we are looking for them.
Hence things like astrology charts that people find amazingly specific and accurate. Tell them their reading and they will be astounded at how good it is, but when you tell them that oops, sorry, you read the wrong one, they are not really surprised because in the back of their mind they know they are doing all the work to make it fit themselves. This is how religions work. They work amongst those who want them to work, because it is all in the mind. Nobody within the religion is surprised when someone loses faith, because they all know faith is a needy high-maintenance girlfriend, freedom from it can feel like a relief because it is not what it pretends to be.
I felt a bit weird about that for a long time. Much later I realised I may have seen an advert and forgotten about it.
Or it could have been God telling me to - feel awkward?
Bear in mind that humans are biased towards seeing patterns, this is a great survival mechanism, enabling us to recognise trends and act accordingly and proportionally, but it also means we see phantom patterns because we can't accept that there are no patterns when we are looking for them.
Hence things like astrology charts that people find amazingly specific and accurate. Tell them their reading and they will be astounded at how good it is, but when you tell them that oops, sorry, you read the wrong one, they are not really surprised because in the back of their mind they know they are doing all the work to make it fit themselves. This is how religions work. They work amongst those who want them to work, because it is all in the mind. Nobody within the religion is surprised when someone loses faith, because they all know faith is a needy high-maintenance girlfriend, freedom from it can feel like a relief because it is not what it pretends to be.