MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 5:26 p.m. ET, Tues., March. 4, 2008
JERUSALEM - When Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, he may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

Writing in the British philosophy journal Time and Mind, Benny Shanon of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University said two plants in the Sinai desert contain the same psychoactive molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an “altered state of awareness,” Shanon hypothesized.

It would not surprise me to find that most religions have  their roots based in some type of mind altering substance.

Do any of these religious wackos ever read their own bullshit? It's really difficult to say which one is more ridiculous than the next. The one thing we know for sure is that several billion people are dead wrong in their religious beliefs

. . .and we've been on a really bad trip for over 5,000 years.

know or infer an objective fact.   It's pretty common that people are unwilling to say, 'well, I just don't know' and instead conjure up all sorts of myths - good example is creation myths - EVERY civilization has some sort of creation myth that usually forms a basis for becoming crazy and doing shit to your neighbor that you wouldn't normally do.

Although I haven't read this fellow's hypothesis, his comments are based in his belief that because there are plants that will make you high in the Negev, he thinks they were used for that purpose.

Not an original idea.  Aldous Huxley suggested the same thing over 50 years ago.   But it's also pretty well established that (1) weird shit can happen naturally, and (2) people can come up with bullshit on their own, consciously or not, and this fella seems to just say he doesn't think that happened.  Same phenomenon - no evidence - unless you want to count the fact that he admits he was tripping on weeds himself.

Another hypothesis is Julian Jaynes ideas of the development of consciousness - that "hearing voices" (a schizophrenic trait) is what happens as minds move from animal instinct toward consciousness.

But let's face it - crazy people are well adapted to our world.  If a person can establish that they are religious, or mentally ill, then other people will excuse their actions, and let them establish tax-free non-profits, plead insanity, etc.  Shit, we elect them to office.

Fuck that shit.  If a person is maladapted, let THAT motherfucker pay the freight.  It's Ma Nature's way.

to a 2008 study purorting to know what someone ate a couple of thousand years ago, especially without an examination of the remains.

Oh this is science?

ROTFLMAO!!!

I hate organized religion and I hate their overbearing zealots trying to push their many varied beliefs down my throat. As far as "God" or a God or many gods depending on the fairy tale being told, I simply question his, or it's existence.

Do you hate science? or do you merely question it? Hating science would be just as narrow minded as hating "God"

i know ga, i just use that expression to agitate. Its my coping mechanism to deal with all th ebushahting pantscrappers here....anyways..

i share your disdain for the zealots, but particularly for the cynical abusers of religion.

I do not whoever share in the "wholesale condemantion" of the instituion of religion. many are tempted to myopically focus on the ills done in the name of religion but that views obviates the great deal of good that is done as well....


hwt can i say? im a well rounded guy...

BTW, science is inanimate, i don't know how you could hate that....besides, God made science too..

-- Modified on 3/5/2008 4:44:32 PM

a couple of decades of living in the bible belt has disabused me from that tolerance.

Why is it OK for a perfect stranger to invite himself into MY house and proceed to tell me that I am going to burn in eternal hellfire if I don't subscribe to his particular version of the larger fairy tale which is chistianity, but if I in turn point out the utter ridiculousness of the fairy tale then I am the one accused of  being insensitive to HIS religious beliefs.

Why is it considered good manners to bow your head when at another's home if they choose to say grace before a meal. (I am not against this as it is THEIR house), but by the benefit of a double standard it is considered perfectly acceptable for someone to insist on saying grace at MY table in MY house when a guest in MY home. Why is it considered rude if I request that they restrict their silly superstitions to their own home?

I used to tolerate this type of behavior in the interest of being polite, after many decades of putting up with this kind of bullshit, I no longer tolerate it, I have run out of tolerance for the intolerant.

because I can't find it either.  But everything that I can find says that he doesn't claim to have any evidence - he's just *hypothesizing* (ie running his mouth), BECAUSE - because he got high eating plants once.

NOW, BK, you have to understand,, this fella is a shrink.   They don't KNOW anything, they just guess.  That's all this fella claims to be doing.  He guesses Moses was high.  

Now I suspect that's a fair guess.  Jimson weed, aka loco weed, is just ONE of the weeds around here that will make you high as a fucking kite.

OTOH, there's no fucking evidence the event ever happened.  What makes him so sure the Moses was tripping, instead of just some bored-ass scribe just dreaming shit up?

Maybe more to the point, exactly who gives a fuck?  I'll tell you who gives a fuck - the people who want to use that information for an excuse to kill  other people when they can't think of any other reason.

Now what puzzles the hell out of me is that as soon as somebody identifies themselves as a shrink, people think there is some science involved.  I have NEVER met a shrink who won't back off that inside 10 minutes of cross-examination.

So my point here is, you have only yourself to blame for taking this fella seriously.  He's already told you he's a shrink, and one that goes out and gets high with the Indians in the Amazon.  WTF, over?!

he's a professor of shrinkology....

that means he teaches others how to pull shit out of their asses

that way, he has a mulitiplier effect, kinda like Amway...

-- Modified on 3/5/2008 5:39:09 PM

there really must be something about your neighborhood though, I just don't run into people like that... even the 10 speed guys piss off when instructed...but Christ, they are so few and far between...

maybe you just attract them because you insist on being so dismissive,

i mean all this "fairy tale" and "superstition" rhetoric might be like honey to the flies...

-- Modified on 3/5/2008 5:44:51 PM

JackO is definitely back on his meds. I agree with the original post only as far as to say it makes just as much sense as any other explanation that's been offered. Which of course means it doesn't have to make a bit of sense, and only the sheep would actually take him seriously.

Whether it was a drugged out Moses, a bored ass scribe, or some other asshole making shit up. the fact that the guy is a shrink doesn't make him immune from projecting his own experiences into the mix, quite the contrary it probably makes him more likely to.

A drugged out shrink??? Probably more the rule than the exception.

The story was good for a laugh though

that if he tells two friends, and they tell two friends, etc etc. Eventually everyone will believe this shit. ROFL

the number of kids today that are on pysch meds peddeled by these "medical professionals" is fucking scandalous..

but its part of a greater hypocondria[sic}


-- Modified on 3/5/2008 5:53:16 PM

They're not so rare here in these parts. You would think that the common sense gun laws we have here in Georgia would discourage assholes like this, you have no idea how tempted on occasion to allow them to meet Jesus a little sooner than they had in mind. I mean to listen to their bullshit, it would seem like I was doing them a favor to send them on their way to the next life. lol

shrinks criticize the hell out of clinical shrinks.  You sort of expect academics to be higher than kites, but not so true here.

Check "Whores of the Court" on Amazon - a little vague & strident for me (I like tabbed & authenticated exhibits) but there's others when you look.

Actually, I think that it's more than the shrinks - it's our own gullibility, and institutions (NIH, HMOs, schools) that simply cannot resist the power and money involved in glib bullshit.  You're not responsible, you're diseased.  I can't teach them because they're diseased.

You would not believe what I have heard MDs & shrinks say - like "even if the dx wasn't true, I'd still have to make it for the insurance"; and "I only prescribe (a drug) because I know they'll get it somewhere else".  "So I made a mistake - everybody makes mistakes."  (Yeah, doc, but I TOLD you that it was not only mistake, but a FUCKING STUPID mistake when you said it.  I nearly got tossed by security on that one, and 6 months later she was making lame excuses.)

And it gets worse.

have you considered more dicrimination in your choice of dinner guests?  they ain't just barging in and plopping themselves down in the GaGambler dining room?

Now, don't get me wrong if you're reading Zin.  I fully agree that there are crazy people, and there are times that meds are appropriate.

But I think that patients and parents and guardians are entitled to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  That means the admission that DSM "mental illnesses" have no objective markers, and are in fact judgments that a person's behavior pattern is maladapted - and your great-aunt Sally is as good a judge of that as any shrink.

And drugs should not be the first fucking plan.  Communicate with the brat/bitch, if you have to do it thru the seat of their pants!   Sports do people LOTS of good, but more when they PLAY, not when they watch the boob tube!!  I'm all for Title IX, if it firms up only a dozen female asses and minds!!

I have not yet begun to rant!

that men cannot control their little heads, and never think what baggage might come with a woman!

I think that marriage licenses should be as hard to get as most occupational licenses.  Each party would be required to file SEC-type disclosures of all credit, criminal, psychiatric and other material records - not only of themselves, but also all relatives in the 1st degree - and violations would carry a stiffer penalty than say, pirating a CD (you must have read the copyright notices!).

You will thank me when you learn your prospective Mother-in-law is a spiritualist with half the shrinks in the county on retainer, and that your intended's credit rating is a negative number.

I took a little literary license on that one. People don't pull that kind of shit in my house, but I have seen them do it in other's homes.

A veteran of several bad divorces(aren't they all) he started getting financial statements from any woman that he was considering getting serious with.

go online to the county recorder, see what's filed what by/against her.   Check the local court records, which are mostly online.   Divorce records are a fucking wealth of information.  They usually include a restraining order out here, because women just love to turn the knife - and as they are often ex parte, they are also usually half lies.

Google her, obviously - in all prior names.  Things like zoominfo pull up all sorts of associations.  

The thing I personally am most afraid of is the psych record, and you won't get that unless she tells you.  Remember, the shrink will tell her there is NO CURE for ANY psych dx, that the best she can do is remission - and you gotta figure out how much of that she actually believes.

But the more sensible thing to do is just check out her family at the 4th of July BBQ, when half of them have a few beers in them.  Chat them up and get them telling stories about her, and TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY.

Meet her mother, that's usually what she'll end up being in twenty years. I am so glad that I am much more interested in the next twenty minutes, not the next twenty years.

anyway!