The Institute for the Advancement of Psychedelic Christianity

In his new book, Things that Bother Me, Galen Strawson argues against ultimate moral responsibility (or free will) as follows:

(1) You do what you do—in the circumstances in which you find yourself—because of the way you are.
(2) So if you’re going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain mental respects.
(3) But you can’t be ultimately responsible for the way you are. [I will say something about his reasons for this below.]
(4) So you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do. (p. 113)

This argument goes wrong at the first premise, which is only half the truth. You do what you do because of the way you are, AND you are the way you are because of what you do.  And this explains why premise 3 is also wrong.

Strawson says, “Sometimes people explain why number 3 is true by saying that you can’t be causa sui—you can’t be the cause of yourself. You can’t be truly or ultimately self-made in any way.” The unqualified (“in any way”) claim here contrasts with the qualification he added in number 2: “you’re going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain mental respects.” (Emphasis added by me) Why can’t you be truly or ultimately self-made, not in all ways, but in certain mental respects, and thus ultimately responsible for what you do?

I agree that I am not ultimately responsible for being a human with certain physical and biological features, who is male or female, or short or tall, who is subject to physical laws and biological needs and desires. I just find myself in that situation. But we don’t hold someone responsible for being male or female, short or tall, or for being subject to the law of gravity or for needing to eat food, drink water, and breathe air to stay alive. The question is whether I or anyone else is ultimately responsible for the kind of choice as in Strawson’s example of choosing on a particular occasion between buying a cake for a party or, instead, giving the money to a person in obvious need outside the cake store. True, I or someone else could explain the choice I make in that situation as the effect of the way I am in terms of what I most want. I choose to buy the cake because I want the party to be a success more than I want to help someone who wants and needs my help. Or vice-versa. So, we could say that I made the choice I made because of the way I am. But it would take a pattern of such choices to justify the claim that this is the way I am. At any rate, we could say that I am the kind of person who made this choice on this occasion. But what does that add to saying more simply that I made this choice on this occasion? The only thing it could add is the claim that this choice is part of a pattern of similar choices, and that whatever caused the pattern of past choices is what determined this choice and will determine future choices in relevantly similar situations. Unless determinism is true—and Strawson said that his argument is independent of whether or not determinism is true—this leaves it open that I am what caused the pattern of past choices by making those choices. When it comes to what counts for believing someone is ultimately responsible, the kind of person I am = what I do. So yes, it’s true that in order to be ultimately responsible for what I do I would have to be ultimately responsible for the way I am, because what I do = the way I am. This leaves it open that I can do something different from what I have done in the past, so the way I am does not have to be the same as the way I was in the past. That is why, in regards to the kinds of situations in which we normally believe someone is ultimately responsible, I am ultimately responsible both for what I do and for the way I am.

In addition to simply finding myself being a human who is subject to physical laws and biological necessities for which I am not responsible at all, there is another, deeper fact about who I am for which I am not ultimately responsible, and that is which person, out of all the persons there are, that I am. I am not responsible for which person I am. That is just given. This is the sense in which I can’t be the cause of myself. But given which person I am out of all the persons there are, I am ultimately responsible for what kind of person I am = what I do. I am the cause of myself in this way: I am the cause of the kind of person I am.

 

Spinoza asks us to imagine a stone that is moving through the air (say, because someone has thrown it or it has been dislodged and is falling over a cliff) and says that if that stone were self-conscious, it would be convinced that it was moving of its own accord. (And Einstein, following Spinoza, used a similar example involving the moon being self-conscious and believing it had freely decided to orbit the earth.) And this is supposed to help convince us that we are similarly deluded when we think we can freely decide to raise an arm, for example. But when we are pushed by someone else or trip and fall, we don’t think we freely decided to move. And we clearly conceive the difference between, for example,  1) freely deciding to lie down on the ground, and 2) tripping and falling and finding ourselves lying on the ground. Furthermore, if we imagine a stone being self-conscious, we can easily imagine two alternatives in which it is not deluded: 1) it, the magically self-conscious stone, realizes it can never move on its own; 2) it, the magically self-conscious stone, can freely decide to move on its own and also knows that it isn’t moving on its own when someone has picked it up and thrown it or when it has been dislodged and is falling over a cliff. Spinoza’s (and Einstien’s) example should convince no one that free will is an illusion.

What Nietzsche is right about

Selflessness is a bad ideal. (He explains it as cruelty turned inward.)

Morality motivated by resentment is bad.

Rejecting life and longing for nothingness is bad.

If Christianity holds selflessness as the moral ideal, motivated by resentment of the powerful, and rejecting the only life and world as one has known it in the unrealistic hope for an afterworld that is better; then it should be rejected.

It is good, not bad, to want to have more power over one’s own life.

Antisemitism is stupid and boring and born of the resentment of a feeling of inferiority.

What he is wrong about

The will to power is the only real motivation in all living things, including humans. Master morality celebrates the will to power and directs outward the cruelty that it necessarily involves. Slave morality condemns the will to power as immoral, even though it is just as motivated by the will to power as master morality is. It directs inward the cruelty required by the will to power and hence promotes the false ideal of selflessness.

Christianity holds selflessness as the moral ideal, motivated by resentment of the powerful, and rejecting the only life and world as one has known it in the unrealistic hope for an afterworld that is better. Hence, Christianity should be rejected.

God is dead, and we have killed him.

The goal is to overcome oneself as one now is and to become Superman, like the god Dionysus.

Pity is bad.

There is only one world, and we each have only one life, although this same world and life in every detail recurs eternally.

Considerations in support of the claim that he is wrong about those things

From a subjective point of view, there is no discernible difference between living your life only once and never again and living your life over and over again eternally in exactly the same way each time.

If God is dead, that means that what you previously thought to be of ultimate value you no longer believe to be so. But as long as you believe there is something of ultimate value, you believe in God, whether you use that word or not. Thus, to be an atheist is to deny that there is anything of ultimate value. But that is contrary to experience.

Jesus said that the supreme commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength and that a second command that is like it is to love your neighbor as yourself. This implies that you should love yourself, because if you don’t love yourself, then loving your neighbor as you love yourself would mean not loving your neighbor. It also implies that loving God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength and loving yourself are like each other.

Loving God also means loving your life as it has been given to you, with all its limitations on your ability to control things, such as unavoidable suffering, grief, and loss. Thus, your having power over those things is not what is of ultimate value, and the will to power is not the ultimate motivation for everything you do.

There is no good line of reasoning, either deductive or inductive, to believe that you will ever be permanently unconscious, even though there are plenty of good reasons to believe you will die at the end of this life. You have never been permanently unconscious, since you are conscious now, so first-person experience could never show that permanent unconsciousness is a likely outcome; and the nightly and daily transitions from being awake to dreaming and from dreaming to waking up constitute a strong inductive base for the conclusion that the transition from being alive to being dead is probably experienced subjectively as something similar. Therefore, you have good reason to believe you will have other lives besides this one in other worlds besides this one, even though the life you live will always just be your life, and whatever world you find yourself in will always be the one you call “this world.” Alternatively, we may say that this world consists of many worlds and your life consists of many lives. Either way, it is perfectly rational to hope that sufferings you have to endure will be compensated by future as well as past joys, even when the suffering takes the form of sickness leading to death.

There is nothing condescending about true pity, which recognizes in the suffering of someone else the same thing as one’s own suffering. We should all feel pity for each other because we all suffer and die and see loved ones suffer and die. But we should also feel a brotherhood and sisterhood of joy, because it is a good and joyful thing to be alive, and none of us is going to die utterly into nothingness ever.

The following is a dialogue on the root causes of war and religion, and, in general, on whether religion is a good thing or a bad thing. It consists of comments made by Dread Jo Davies and my replies to his comments, on a Facebook posting promoting my new book, Psychedelic Christianity. The Facebook posting featured an endorsement of the book, along with a link to the Amazon page for it. The endorsement read as follows:

”A highly trained philosopher, Jack Call (Ph.D., Claremont) takes great care to present clear and convincing arguments, and as someone who has walked the walk, speaks with authority about both psychedelic and religious experience.”—Kurt Smith, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Christianity-Ultimate-Goal-Living/dp/1785357476/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527313468&sr=1-1&keywords=psychedelic+christianity

The dialogue went this way:

Dread Jo Davies: Why get fucked up on religion or drugs when you can do both!

Me: The trouble with saying “fucked up” is that it sounds like something bad.

Dread Jo Davies: Yes, religion is one of earth’s diseases with seemingly no cure.

Me: All religion? Are you sure? Because my religion doesn’t feel like any disease I’ve ever had — more like healing.

Dread Jo Davies: Religion=war, has done for thousands of years, an atheist world would be a peaceful world, especially if they did away with currency too.

Me: I doubt very much that if everyone ceased to believe in God and to use currency, there would be fewer wars. But if so, I would think that it was a good thing that there were fewer wars but not a good thing that people had ceased to believe in God.

What I would say is that no genuinely religious goal is advanced by forcing anyone to do anything.

I don’t think I would prefer a world without the use of currency. I suppose that would be one in which people would barter for goods? But I confess I haven’t given it much thought.

Dread Jo Davies: Yep, bartering with goods and favors, probably wouldn’t work but we all know the two main factors of all war going on right now, and that is money and religion.

Me: I think the root cause of war is the desire to control other people’s actions.

Dread Jo Davies: I think the same as that last sentence — just replace war with religion.

Me: I think the root cause of religion is the realization that there are important things that one cares about very much that are not under one’s control, either individually or in concert with others, and never will be.

Psychedelic Revisionism, as evidenced most recently in the spate of publicity about Michael Pollan’s new book and in interviews with him about it, says that if only Timothy Leary, who was, after all, just “a washed-up psychology professor,” had kept quiet, we would all now be enjoying legal access to psychedelics in controlled studies, wearing eyeshades and headphones, listening to “a very carefully curated playlist” (retch!), having diminished activity in a “very important brain network called the default mode network” because the psychedelic substances “take this network offline,” and then filling out surveys so that scientists can “crunch the data” to find that “a very important personality trait that psychologists call openness” has increased in us— “a very unusual finding.”

Enough with the eyeshades and headphones already! Opening your eyes and looking at the amazing world is not going to turn your trip into an external experience. Choose your own music if you want to listen to music. Don’t spend all your time listening to music anyway, unless you want to.

And enough with the scientistic bs and with seeking respectability in the eyes of people who think everything can and should be kept under control! Psychedelic experience shows that some of the things you care about most—your mortality or immortality, whether or not you love and are loved, your suffering and the suffering of those you love—are not and never will be under your control, and that it is a good and joyful thing that that is the way it is. This is religion, not science. Aldous Huxley got that right in the first place.

To scientists, people are objects to be studied. Psychedelic experience causes some interesting observable effects in those objects, but it is the experience itself, from the point of view of the subject of the experience, that is the realization that everything is fundamentally all right.

It isn’t Timothy Leary’s fault that LSD and other psychedelics are illegal. It’s the fault of those who have the power to make them illegal or to repeal those laws. Since we live in a democracy, that is supposed to be all of us. Timothy Leary expected that when enough people had experienced psychedelics, the very thought of making them illegal would be laughable. His mistake was in believing that that would happen right away. And he wasn’t always scrupulously honest in trying to bring it about. And he was a publicity hog. But he was right about the importance and the value of psychedelic experience. And he was right that it blows the lid off the pretensions of polite society, academia, and institutionalized “science.”

I wish Michael Pollan well. I wish MAPS, the Beckley Foundation, and similar groups well. I think their hearts are sort of in the right place. They just don’t seem very stoned.

If there is universal salvation, someone might object, then what difference does it make whether one believes or not, whether one is a sadist or a saint?

On my view, the difference between the fates of believers and nonbelievers, or between the fates of sadists and saints, is not in the ultimate outcome but in what each one believes about the ultimate outcome. It is their failure to believe in a good ultimate outcome — that disbelief itself — that is the sufficient punishment of nonbelievers and sadists. And I don’t mean to imply that all nonbelievers are sadists. But I do mean to imply that the unbelief of both is equivalent to a belief in a cruel pagan god, the kind that is pleased with the utter death of humans and other animals.

But what about the Christian interpretation of the sacrifice of Jesus as a way of placating an angry God? Well, I reject that interpretation, and I don’t think it is consistent with the New Testament. The crucifixion of Jesus is a turning of the table on the idea of placating an angry God. And the corrupt and spiritually blind high priest and Sanhedrin were interested in placating the worldly power of Rome and satisfying an implacable and inhumane legalistic religion. Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, so his crucifixion is an attempt to kill a man who is God, and does not please God. Then why does he will it? So that Jesus may be visibly resurrected from that death, showing that we, too, will be resurrected after our deaths. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:16-19: “For if the dead do not rise, then neither has Christ risen; and if Christ has not risen, your faith is in vain, you are still in your sins. And then also those who went to their rest in Christ are lost. If by this life in Christ we are no more than hopeful, then we are the most pitiful of all people.” And in 2 Timothy 2:11-13: “This word is to be believed: If we die with him, we shall live with him; if we endure, we shall be kings with him; if we disown him, he will disown us; if we lose our belief, he is still to be believed, for he cannot disown himself.”
(Translation by Richmond Lattimore)

Jesus’ message is life everlasting. If we disown him, that means we don’t believe in life everlasting; that is, we believe in eternal death or everlasting destruction. Our disbelief is his disowning us. He cannot disown himself; but if we don’t believe him, he can’t believe in himself for us. Notice Paul says, “if we lose our belief, he is still to be believed.” That is, even if we don’t believe it — and that disbelief itself is our punishment — it is still true that we have everlasting life. It’s just that we don’t yet believe it and so can’t enjoy it and instead live with the dread of death as permanent unconsciousness lurking always in the background of our lives. If we believe Jesus, that dread is replaced by joy. And there is good reason to believe Jesus. The very idea of permanent unconsciousness is really unthinkable. Just try to imagine it.

Is a miracle a violation of the laws of nature?

Suppose you witness a marvelous, amazing event that you did not expect to happen and is of such a nature that you did not even believe that such a thing was possible. It was beyond anything you had ever imagined or hoped for. You naturally want to share the news, and later that day you tell a friend that you had witnessed a miracle, describing to him what happened. You are not surprised when he expresses doubt: “Are you sure that is what happened? Could it be that you fell asleep momentarily and dreamed it?” After all, you yourself doubted your senses at first, thinking, “What is happening? Did I just see and hear and feel what I thought I saw and heard and felt?” You, too, consider the possibility that you were dreaming, but if so, you reckon, you are still dreaming, because you have no memory of having waked up between then and now. You have no idea of why it happened or how it happened, but you can’t doubt that it did happen, unless you really are still asleep. And you do have vague memories of having dreams in which something was happening that at first seemed ordinary and unremarkable and then, surprisingly quickly, turned into something that was not ordinary and unremarkable at all but increasingly strange and wonderful. So, you admit to your friend that it could be that you are still just dreaming that it happened and that you will wake up soon and realize that you were only dreaming that you were having this conversation with him; but you assert that in the meantime you have no doubt that you witnessed what you witnessed, even though you can’t explain how it was possible.

Your friend now suggests another possible explanation that would deflate the wonder and awe that the event had inspired in you. Could it be that you had wandered into an area where a movie was being filmed, that the equipment and crew were out of your line of vision, and that you were seeing and hearing special visual and auditory effects that the filmmakers were creating? You don’t see how that could have been the case and invite him to go with you back to the place where it happened to see if there is any evidence of that. It is only a short drive away. He accepts. You both go there, carefully inspect the area, and find no evidence of anything that could explain the strange series of events (visionary experience?) that had happened to you there. You ask several people in the general vicinity if they had seen any film crew or anything else unusual in that area. The answer is No. You show your friend the exact place where it happened, and everything looks perfectly ordinary, except that for you, though not for him, there is a subjective aura, something thrilling about the place because of what happened there.

It must somehow show in your face, because your friend now asks, with a wry smile, “Have you been indulging in some psychoactive substance?” You are not insulted. It is a reasonable question to ask. If it was an hallucination that you had suffered, then that would be at least a kind of explanation. But not much of one, for you would then wonder what would be the explanation for why you had hallucinated precisely that scene that was so marvelous and amazing, and beyond anything that you had ever imagined or hoped. What difference did it really make whether it was an hallucination or not? Either way, it would be just as awe-inspiring and just as singular compared to what came before and after. And this goes back to the dream possibility we thought of before. “Even if I am dreaming,” you think, “unless I somehow manage to forget what this was like, which to me now seems impossible, it will continue to be one of the most remarkable things that I have ever experienced.”

You realize that your friend isn’t, and in the nature of things can’t be, as interested in this question as you are. You are well aware, for example, that a dream is always more interesting to the person who dreamed it than to someone hearing about it. And skepticism seems the appropriate first response to a reported miracle. But then, dream or not, you have the stubborn feeling that this miracle you have witnessed is the realest thing that has ever happened to you.

Let us suppose, too, that although you can’t explain how it was caused by anything you did or anything anyone else did, including God; now that you’ve experienced it, you can’t escape the feeling that it sheds light on everything that happened before in your life and everything that will happen going forward.

But would such an experience be a miracle? It clearly would be one in the original sense of the word, which is of something marvelous and amazing, since that is just what I have asked you to imagine the experience to be like. But theologians and philosophers have added some metaphysical baggage to the word, so that “miracle” now also carries the meaning of an event that violates the laws of nature. For instance, John Milton wrote the following in the section with the subtitle “Of the Providence of God” in The Christian Doctrine:

“The providence of God is either ordinary or extraordinary. His ordinary providence is that whereby he upholds and preserves the immutable order of causes appointed by him in the beginning. . . . The extraordinary providence of God is that whereby God produces some effect out of the usual order of nature, or gives the power of producing the same effect to whomsoever he may appoint. This is what we call a miracle. Hence God alone is the primary author of miracles, as he only is able to invert that order of things which he has himself appointed.”

And David Hume, in his section on miracles in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, wrote this:

“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined…. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior.”

Now imagine that after you and your friend had parted that day, he had sent you an e-mail, with the subject heading “Still skeptical, I confess” and consisting of those two quotations. And he follows up with this continuation of the Hume quotation:

“The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), ‘That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.’”

At first, your feelings are hurt. It seems your friend has just called you a liar by way of quoting Hume. But you reflect that his skepticism is reasonable. The degree to which the experience was amazing to you is the degree to which your account of it seems incredible to him. How would you reply? Wouldn’t you be just as convinced as ever of the significance of your extraordinary experience, even though you realize that your friend will only be able to judge it by the fruit of your behavior going forward?

I can tell you how I would reply, were I in your situation. I would say that I don’t know whether what I had experienced was a violation of the laws of nature or not, that I wasn’t there when God established those laws, but that whether God had made use of his laws in ways that I don’t understand or instead had temporarily suspended those laws, I would be forever grateful for what He had shown me that day.

I have come across thoughts similar to mine regarding personal identity in two quite dissimilar books, the novel A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (1929), and the philosophical essay System of Transcendental Idealism by F. W. J. Schelling (1800).

First, here are some passages from my books expressing the thought:

From God is a Symbol of Something True: “It is simply an irreducible fact that I am the person who I am, that you are you, that everyone else is whoever he or she is, and that each of us is unique. It can’t be explained or analyzed in terms of some more basic fact or set of facts.” (p. 120)

From Dreams and Resurrection: “The first-person perspective, the fact that, out of all the people in the world, one is just this person and no other, is simply given to each one of us. Without it, no analysis of what personal identity consists in will enable us to understand what makes a particular person the one he or she is.” (p. 120)

From Psychedelic Christianity: “What can be seen is the outside. What can’t be seen is the inside. But the inside is experienced, directly, by each one of us. Psychedelic Christianity is based on the empirical principle: try it and find out for yourself. It is a distortion of empiricism to think of it as belief in only what can be confirmed by what appears to the senses, or else we must expand our concept of ‘the senses.’ If I feel joy, for example, is that something I know through sense experience? Out of all the people I know about, I know which one I am. Is that something I know through sense experience? Whose sense experience?” (p. 60)

And here is the passage from A High Wind in Jamaica: “She had been playing houses in a nook right in the bows, behind the windlass (on which she had hung a devil’s-claw as a door-knocker); and tiring of it was walking rather aimlessly aft, thinking vaguely about some bees and a fairy queen, when it suddenly flashed into her mind that she was she. . . .

Once fully convinced of this astonishing fact, that she was now Emily Bas-Thornton (why she inserted the ‘now’ she did not know, for she certainly imagined no transmigrational nonsense of having been any one else before), she began seriously to reckon its implications.

First, what agency had so ordered it that out of all the people in the world who she might have been, she was this particular one, this Emily; born in such-and-such a year out of all the years in Time, and encased in this particular rather pleasing little casket of flesh? Had she chosen herself, or had God done it?” (p. 84)

From System of Transcendental Idealism: “That I am limited as such follows directly from the self’s unending tendency to become an object to itself; limitation as such is therefore explicable, but it leaves the determinacy entirely free, even though both arise through one and the same act. Both taken together, that the determinate limitation cannot be determined through limitation as such, and yet that it arises along with the latter, simultaneously and through one act, means that it is one thing that philosophy can neither conceive nor explain. As surely, indeed, as I am limited as such, I must be so determinately, and this determinacy must reach into the infinite, for this infinitely outreaching determinacy constitutes my entire individuality; it is not, therefore, the fact that I am determinately limited which cannot be explained, but rather the manner of this limitation itself. For example, it can certainly be deduced in general that I belong to a determinate order of intelligences, but not that I belong to precisely this order; that I occupy a determinate position in this order, but not that it is precisely this one.” (p. 59)

 

 

 

 

Recently, I boosted a page on Facebook with a link to the post on this website called “What they are saying about Psychedelic Christianity.” Some people who saw the post took on the role of critics, taking me to task for what they thought I must have said in the book which they haven’t read. I, along with some others, replied to what they said. Here are the comments and replies (capitalizations and punctuation as they appeared):

Maureen Delaney wrote: Everything you need to know about God and His great love for you can be found in the Bible. He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for your sins; that if you would accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, repenting for your sins and obeying Him, you would spend eternity in Heaven with Him. This author is a deceiver and his book will lead people astray.

Dave Pilkington replied to Maureen Delaney as follows: After years of watching mankind murder rape and destroy each other. The only thing this Mythical God can think to do is to send his son down to earth to be Tortured and crucified. Well that took a lot of thought didn’t it.

So how did that ridiculous act help Mankind? What exactly has it done to stop Murderers Rapists the physical abuse of young boys by Church members young girls some as young as 11 sold to old men to Rape and beat. Terrorist blowing innocent people up. So Jesus’s death has achieved Nothing. We are still a Barbaric race. There are so many different beliefs in Religion so many Gods Who is the True God? Islam the so called Religion of Peace preaches There can be only one God and that’s Allah. What ever part of the world you are born that’s the religion you are taught. So who is the true God? that’s if there is a God. It’s going to be a real bummer if you have been praying to the wrong one.

Maureen Delaney replied to Dave Pilkington: Christianity offers a deep and personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus paid the price for man’s sins on the Cross with the shedding of His precious blood. Mankind is guilty of every evil wickedness that is known; Jesus, not only redeems us, but gives us the power to change. I am speaking of true Christians who follow and obey Him, not those who claim to be Christians and continue in rebellion against God.

I replied to Dave Pilkington: If you think it is a myth, then try to understand it in mythical terms. It seems to me you are trying to have it both ways — condemning it as a myth (but myths can convey truth, can’t they?) and interpreting it literally to condemn it as nonsensical. The story is that God became human in order to understand what it is like to suffer as a human. I think Maureen is right to point out that it is unfair to judge an entire religion based on the sins of some its followers, especially when that religion teaches that we are all sinners. The question is whether the great Christian themes of forgiveness and the duty to love one’s neighbor are true and worthy ideals we should do our best to follow.

I then asked Maureen Delaney: What makes you think I am a deceiver?

She replied: The Greek word for sorcery is pharmakeia. Unless needed for medical reasons, it is an abomination to God. The-end-of-time.blogspot.com will give you more information. You are so wrong and leading others astray.

I replied: If you think the etymology of the word settles the issue, why do you think it is OK to use drugs for medical reasons? Where in the Bible does it say that it is an abomination to use drugs for reasons other than the ones you would deem to be medical? Is taking the wine in Holy Eucharist done for medical reasons?

She replied: Please read the end-of-time.blogspot.com. If you need drugs to find God, then you have a very big problem. The Bible explicitly says that you must be born again to inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Cor. 12 speaks of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural gifts that Holy Spirit gives. This leads to greater revelation of God and His Kingdom. If you think that God in any way promotes the use of drugs to find Him you are greatly deceived. People using drugs under a doctor’s care are using it because of the pain they are dealing with, not because they think it will help them find or understand God.

And I replied: Well, psychedelic experiences made me more interested in religion, and now I am a Christian. I looked at the blogspot, and it seems to me overly concerned with criticizing others for falling short.

Another critic, James McCullough, made this remark: Don’t believe in false teachings that tickle your ears.

I replied: Right! And don’t believe in ones that don’t tickle your ears either!

Doris Caver trenchantly commented: There are books that I know not to read. The two words in the title are oxymoron.

I replied as follows: The word “psychedelic” was coined by Dr. Humphrey Osmond in 1956 to describe what he had experienced as a result of ingesting LSD and mescaline. He used two Greek roots, “psyche,” a noun, and “deloun,” a verb, to form the adjective or noun “psychedelic.” Psyche means “the soul, mind, spirit; breath; life, one’s life, the invisible animating principle or entity which occupies and directs the physical body; understanding” Deloun means “to make visible, to reveal.” How is any of that the opposite of Christianity?

Doris Caver did not reply.

Another critic, Sandy Carr, posted the following comment: Galatians 1:8. Paul writes But though we, or an Angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. This article is another gospel and has nothing to do with the gospel preached by Christ and the Apostles.

To which I responded by asking: What have I said that you think is contrary to the gospel?

Sandy Carr’s answer: We have no need for drugs to enhance our experience with God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is enough. We have all we need and it is very clear in the Bible. You are adding to the Word when you suggest any thing more. And what I quoted from Galatians is true. You are preaching another Gospel.

I replied: I don’t claim that we need drugs to enhance our experience with God, but I do claim that psychedelic substances can cause experiences that are just like the kind of thing that happened to Saul on the road to Damascus, and there is nothing in the Bible that I am aware of that says otherwise. Who are you to say what is and what is not the work of the Holy Spirit?

In response, Sandy Carr reiterated: You are adding to the gospel and leading people in the wrong direction by even suggesting that.

Another commenter, Mark Wright, directed the following remark to Maureen Delaney, and perhaps Doris Caver and Sandy Carr also: Read it before you condemn it.

I responded: Thank you for that, Mark!

And Maureen Delaney responded: Read the Bible and you will have all the truth you need.

To which Mark Wright replied: I’ve read the Bible, its not for me I’m afraid. I just felt moved to comment after reading some of the posts, no tolerance or debate, or the willingness to share or discuss. It’s this attitude by some Christians that puts people off.

Malcolm Cooper remarked: I want some of the drugs that he’s been on.

Betty Gutierrez posted the following comment: Narrow is the gate to heaven and wide is the road to destruction. Only one way to heaven And that is through my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Jeffrey Zablotsky then posted this: And then he told them, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.” 😉

By the way, everyone who is reading this, you do know that you can comment on this website, under Contact Us?

Readers are getting excited about Psychedelic Christianity! Order your copy today! https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Christianity-Ultimate-Goal-Living/dp/1785357476/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1536523911&sr=1-1&keywords=psychedelic+christianity

“Jack Call plunges deeply into concerns of meaning and purpose. ‘What’s the point?’ he asks. If there is only one ultimate goal, that points to ‘an eternity that scares me . . . frozen, motionless, stale and suffocating.’ Instead, he paints a vibrant picture of hope for ‘absolutely fresh newness, as on the day of Creation, with solids that look like they have just gelled from liquid, and liquids that look like shining solids, and everything breathing and squirming with life.’ Wow!

This book deepened my understanding of the kingdom Jesus spoke of; it deepened my faith. My own experiences of ‘spiritual ecstasy’ have come through REALLY good music and nature. It was fascinating to read how Jack Call’s psychedelic experiences have given him deeply beautiful spiritual insights.
I hated to have the book end. I know I will read it again.”
Barbara Kremins, Regisered Nurse, retired

“. . . a breath of fresh air at a time when many folks are losing their religion. The book offers bold and refreshing takes on age-old questions in a modern context. . . . I highly recommend this book for believers, non-believers, and those that are undecided. The author has built a large tent for all of us to be together in peace.”
Bruce Olav Solheim, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of History, Playwright, Citrus College, Glendora, California

“Bravo!! Loved it. This book contains marvelous insights.”
The Rev. Bill Garrison, Rector, St. Matthias Episcopal Church, Whittier, California

“Written with humor, clear language, and a practical approach to the spiritual journey,  Psychedelic Christianity does its readers a great service by reflecting on what many of us have probably thought or wondered, but few of us have the context and rigor to evaluate on our own.”
Michael Dennis, Moderator, First Congregational Church of Los Angeles

“According to Luke, Jesus says about the Kingdom of Heaven that it isn’t something to be found down the road, but is already here. Similarly, Thomas reports Jesus as having said that the Kingdom of Heaven is already on earth, but that men do not see it. In Psychedelic Christianity, Jack Call echoes these profound and yet puzzling proclamations. Psychedelic Christianity is Jack Call’s most recent exploration into connections he and others have made between insights gained by way of psychedelic and ‘traditional’ religious experience. This is a connection first suggested in God is a Symbol of Something True (2009), and pursued further in some detail in the follow-up   Dreams and Resurrection (2014). A highly trained philosopher, Jack Call (Ph.D., Claremont) takes great care to present clear and convincing arguments, and as someone who has walked the walk, speaks with authority about both psychedelic and religious experience. One of the aims of this book is to show how Christianity, how its system of archetypes that constitutes its intelligible framework, can work toward healing the spiritually blind, so that they many now see the Kingdom of Heaven that has been here all along.”
Kurt Smith, Ph. D., Professor of Philosophy, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

“Jack Call’s Psychedelic Christianity offers readers a kaleidoscope of profoundly personal experience and emergent theology — hoping for ‘glorious joy’ in life after life while exploring this life, focusing on human desire for moral, sensual and intellectual beauty in the here and now. Not ‘an aging hippie,’ Call shoots from the hip; he is both self-reflective and frankly straightforward in opinion (e.g. opposing politicized Christianity). Scripture is generously cited.”
Deanna Wilcox, Executive Director, Kids-Net LA, Inc., a non-profit in service to young foster children

“I was brought up with little religion. My mom and dad are non-practicing Christians, and my stepfather is most likely an atheist. What little I know regarding Christianity, I have learned from my grandmothers, and I have picked things up here and there. I admit, I am an agnostic and am still trying to figure this all out. That’s part of the reason why I wanted to read this book. The other being I’ve never taken an LSD trip. As someone who is afraid of death and what happens after, this book has brought some comfort. If anything it has taught me a little more about Christianity from a completely different viewpoint. As a scientist, I like things that make logical sense. Not everything does, but the author did an excellent job of using logic in many of his arguments. I enjoyed this, as I felt the author was using more than blind faith to justify his views, and to me that is important. Evidence and thought. As a philosopher, the author has a way of keeping the reader intrigued by using evidence and logic. Some may find the reading a bit dense at times, but others will also appreciate the preciseness of the language used.”
Paul Swatzel, Professor of Mathematics, Citrus College, Glendora, California

“Psychedelic Christianity is an entertaining and lucid evaluation of the usefulness of hallucinogens in achieving insight into key questions that underlie a spiritual quest. These include our relationship to a higher deity and what is expected of us. The argument leads us to examine the ultimate question concerning the goal of existence. Jack Call argues that while this goal has already been reached, it is not the end of the road. All in all, a fresh examination of the overlap between substance-induced spiritual experiences and Christian teachings, and the revelations that one may have on the other. Psychedelic Christianity is an innovative and provocative read that feeds the inquiring mind.”
Rick Brown, Ph.D., Psychology Dept., Citrus College

“A challenging read but worth it. A philosophical inquiry into the nature of God, with the author’s experiences with psychedelic assistance in opening to the wonder of the Divine.”
Cathy Dehaven, hospice RN (ret.)

“This book will not be everybody’s cup of tea nor rest easily with their way of thinking. Having been a psychiatric nurse, an ordained priest, a psychic and a Counsellor-Psychologist I am not attracted to try this route for myself for I have seen too many adverse reactions, but before there be any words of condemnation I suggest the reader attempt to place their religious scruples and prejudices to one side to consider just what Jack Call is saying alongside the suggestion of psychedelic chemical use and evaluate where the practice has led him. It might surprise them.”
Rev. John Littlewood, BSc (Hons), Cert Pastoral Theology (Cambs), Cert Theology (Cambs)