"Your only experience ever is this."

"This is your only experience. Ever."

"Reality itself is the only God there is."

Dualistic differentiation ruins all my discussions about religion.

Spirits, gods, metaphysical absolutes, I don't understand why any of it has to enter the dialog. The only salient factors are experience and utility, to me. The chemical characteristics of a demon or an archangel are open to speculation, whatever. I don't care. "You're not religious, you're spiritual." The distinction is meaningless. You don't know what it means. So religion has to do with a saving belief that binds people together, according to Pierre Grimes, and spirituality has to do with an individual practice that alters consciousness. Okay, we're right back where we started from.

I'm never interested in talking about religion as a product of rote rules that must be followed, I'm interested in talking about it as a tool. Discussion of orthodox religion bores me.

There is undifferentiated awe. You can have a relationship with the gestalt, or isolated pieces of it. You can make gods. That's all I know. I'm of the opinion that they exists in my head; some people think they exist elsewhere. Some people claim that atheism as an excuse to stop using your imagination while parsing the surrounding environment. These people are boring too. You can name systems whatever you want, I don't care; I'm interested in what they DO.

I'm not interested in your truth. I can figure the truth out on my own, if that's even a thing, no thanks. I'm interested in tools.

Having these kinds of discussions with people that have political agendas is never productive. They want to talk about fears, not tools. They haven't the stomach to ask real questions about what kind of beliefs and experiences have real value or real meaning. Speculation and play is to them out of the question. Their rigid ontology is a matter of life or death.

I think that if your ontology is a matter of life and death you're dead already. Moving through the world is far more interesting if you allow for a little more narrative latitude and a little uncertainty. For god's sake, tell me a story that isn't the same story I've heard, over and over again, fifty million times. And please don't tell me you can save me when you can't even save yourself.