Ouija boards

[zanzi]

my family brought me up and they believed in demons ect, anything bad I did was because I was listening to "satan." and doing what he wanted. I now see it as a bat**** crazy upbringing and certainly abusive, to tell a child that they are devil infected and hell bound if they don't eat their peas.

 

Anyway I am quite bitter about it and have very little to do with my family.

The other night I thought about the day I'm going to die and felt that ceasing to exist would be a terrible thing.

But it would be better then some self righteous deity sending me to hell I suppose.

[Emilia]

This is very interesting to me as I am part african myself, my family is Xhosa tribe.

I'd always wondered how to get a closer understanding of those roots. Not to communicate per se but to feel closer to them.

Which country do your relatives live in? If I remember correctly you find the Xhosa in South Africa and Namibia

 

Can you speak the language? I love that click sound

[TaxAHCruel]

anyone ever used a ouija board? What happened?

 

Nothing that did not happen with any other board game. People came together. People played the game. Time past. Entertainment was had. End of.

 

Why do you WANT to use a ouija board?

 

That is like asking "Why do you want to play monopoly" or "Why do you want to do a jig-saw". It is a card board entertainment piece that people use to spent time alone or together as a diversion.

 

There is no reason to think it is any more than that.

[umirano]

Don't mess with that ****. It's bad news.

 

Especially since you are an atheist. You have no protection. I'm not making a value judgement here. I'm just telling you it's dangerous ****.

 

Hahahahaha... you people are hilarious. I feel like in a dark age peasant village. People gathering around a candle and telling each other about ghosts and appearances of mary.

 

Funny, I thought in this day and age it's only something for teens to scare each other or third world rural people...

[umirano]

Anyway I am quite bitter about it and have very little to do with my family.

That's sad, but I totally get it. Supernatural fear mongering is horrible.

 

The other night I thought about the day I'm going to die and felt that ceasing to exist would be a terrible thing.

Precisely this fuels the need for pseudo explanations, "transcendence" and all this horrible confusion brought on to human kind by religion and cults. And all this surreal blabber eventually results in real world pain and suffering. Just these days in southern Africa several hundred men had to be taken to hospitals because initialization rites went out of control. Thank you, all you people of god, cults and dogma.

 

But it would be better then some self righteous deity sending me to hell I suppose.

 

Word.

 

Btw, if you have the slightest impression that there's anything to any method of future or truth telling, you aren't really consequential at being an atheist. No one is an A-tooth-fairy-ist or an A-zeus-ist. All atheists I know simply reject the idea that there are supernatural effects of any sort. This includes the whole zoo of "truth" telling methods.

 

If there are really objects moved seemingly with no one touching them that doesn't mean there's no natural phenomenon at work. Especially when Carrie mentioned that that board was a piece of cloth on a glass plate: Ever seen a pool table? Cloth on slate. The point is to make objects move fast and easily. So just tilt the board a little and your object will gladly move from one place to the other on your oujia board.

 

Also, fortune doesn't assert there's anything to cards leaves or boards. Even if you'd be reliably better at predicting the weather than the current, very expensive super computing centers, it wouldn't mean that you actually have a better source of information related to the processes that make up the weather patterns. Same thing applies to political or economical phenomenons. If you look at history there are plenty of "rich" people who went a little crazy and started fancying eso stuff. Others collect art or wine or go crazy about old cars. Nothing surprising here. If someone really has a siginificantly better method of modeling or predicting the future in economics, politics, etc. he wouldn't be millionaire. He'd take over the world.

 

But I won't change minds here, I know this perfectly well. But maybe some of those who aren't yet sucked in into this insanity of believing that some glass, cloth, wood or stone really give us a glance into reality otherwise not possible, will hold back a while and think again.

[zanzi]

well I'm not really striving to believe in nothing as hard as possible, so as such I'm not an atheist but an agnostic. Cutting out any viewpoint or possibility other then your own seems as ignorant as religion.

[mesmerized]

I've done it before, more than once...Don't want to tell the stories really, they're personal for me. It's still a huge mystery to me.

 

As for people who say it's not safe, I've done it enough times and I'm ok. I think people fear it too much.

[TaxAHCruel]

People gathering around a candle and telling each other about ghosts and appearances of mary.

 

If only it were limited to the dark ages. We still have that today. Here in Ireland we have a guy who has periodic meet ups where he demonstrates his ability to make Mary appear.

 

Strangely the first step in his process is that everyone has to look directly at the sun for a few minutes first.

 

A bit like making a rabbit appear out of thin air - but only for an audience that are wholly and completely blind folded.

[umirano]

well I'm not really striving to believe in nothing as hard as possible, so as such I'm not an atheist but an agnostic. Cutting out any viewpoint or possibility other then your own seems as ignorant as religion.

I'm not sure whether you're implying that I don't believe anything at all... I do believe things, and in values. There are no gnostic atheists (i.e. people who claim to know that there is no god). There are only agnostic atheists. Knowing there is no god is as rididculous as knowing there is one (gnostic theists). And not believing completely unsubstantiated claims (religion or reliability of any truth telling method) is hardly what I'd call "cutting out".

[Eclypse]

I'd also like to expand my question to everyone who posted. Have you experienced spiritual or supernatural occurrences?

I used to hallucinate due to a medication I would take as a teen and see things I thought in in times of fear were bad spirits.

 

I was brought up in a christian home but am now an atheist, perhaps with some wiggle room for the unknown.

 

I can't say I ever have. The closest would be when I was young asking my mum about my great grandmother the night after she died... before she told me! I guess you're bound to hit some coincidences eventually.

 

The only kind of creepy thing I've ever noticed was hearing a weird whistling sound in my old house (and once in the new one). It was occasional, but always the same melody and over in a few seconds. I'm guessing it was just the wind blowing, but it was pretty spooky as a kid.

 

I've always wondered about people who say they've been contacted by spirits. Is it the mind playing tricks on you? Making up things for you because of superstitious beliefs? Or just faking it?