Spiritual/Religious Experience in Progressive Rock

Guldbamsen wrote: I'm with you all the way. It's just that I've always had an overriding urge to put everything on its head. Even when I was a little kid I had long mind breaks thinking about how weird it would be if 'life' wasn't what we understood it to be and that mountains all of this time had been talking behind our backs? I once thought long and hard about the sea perhaps inhabited the wisest of creatures and that we just hadn't figured out the lingo yet. Maybe aliens had been to earth and they'd just had a chat with some spermwhales. Growing older and oddly enough much more enamoured with logic, science and Occam's razor...I still purposely fling out wild "theories" about life, the universe and everything like bon bons I entirely blame Monty Python and Douglas Adams.

I'm a great believer in Occam's razor and like to take serious flights of fancy (lots of "what if?s). Adams and Monty Python were brilliant because they knowingly took the absurd and went with it, knowing how absurd some of those ideas were, but there was also an internal logic to it, such as the Shoe Event Horizon. Adams could make nonsense sound so sensible, and quite sensible things sound quite nonsensical (there's method in apparent madness, to be cliche). It rather amazes how many insensible ideas are held as canonical by so many people (it's true because it says so). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and the simplest explanation that requires the minimum number of assumptions is generally more likely and makes the more valid argument. That said, if you look into physics such as quantum physics and relativity, or hypotheses such as the holographic principle/ universe, the universe can operate in counterintuitive ways. I appreciate the sense of mystery, and enjoy asking questions, and making strange "what if" leaps. I do wish that less people put faith into stone age musings, but dogma/ doctrine can be a real sense of comfort. I'll take astronomy over astrology, science over superstition, and reason over revelation. I still think there is place for fun and mythology and fantasy generally. I love to think about strange and unlikely things But I digressed really badly an am getting into material best suited for the Deep Thinking thread (not Adams' Deep Thought, but geekfreak's Deep Thinking).

I love this passage from [edit] "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There" by the American track and field athlete Carl Lewis, erm, Lewis Carroll.

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.""

Edited by Logan - July 06 2018 at 13:13

Silly me, thought it might be. I have become terribly unreliable -- been many years since I last read it, but that passage stuck with me.

"Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards" (Lewis Carroll).

Too often I'm guilty of starting with writing it down first, but given the opportunities, I often eventually reach the truth in the editing process. Good thing we have members to peer review our posts here.

"For my life, I confess to you, feels to me today somewhat narrow and circumscribed" (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows).

Edited by Logan - July 06 2018 at 13:03

Oh and I just finished your survey Klmberley. Feel free to contact me if you need anything
Best of luck!

Heh. Why Prog?

ReactioninG wrote: Heh. Why Prog?

wiz_d_kidd wrote: I took the survey.  Although not really religious or spiritual, I am apt to "flights of fancy" when listening to prog.  I try to relate some of those flights in my reviews. My only wish in the survey was that they defined what they meant by "religious" or "spiritual".  Do you have to believe in a God to have such an experience?  Do you have to be a practicing member of a religion, and uphold the tenets that they espouse? It's almost as nebulous as defining "prog", for heaven's sake. <grin>

I took the survey. Not at all religious (complete atheist).

If you want any more information, feel free to ask. I am around here daily, and all.

I did leave my email in the survey as well.