CellE2057 said 
The idea that there are numerous gods of varying power has always interested me. I think that if there is a god, it would be something like that. There’s a god of harvest, winter, wine, etc. etc. None of which are really powerful beyond their own expertise. Nifty little idea. 

Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods uses this idea; the story shows gods in human form, created by humans & brought with them to new cultures when they immigrate. God as a meme (“an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, especially imitation”)… why not.

All hail the god of procrastination. Do it. Do it now!

When I was a kid, my uncle was shot and while he was in surgery his family reverted back to their catholic roots. They prayed and prayed and prayed and he came out all right. My cousins, who are about the same age as me, were told that god was the reason their dad survived and that the holy word of god is the most important thing in the world. They began going to church and all of it.

The thing is my uncle used to be a drug addict and had a criminal record. I think religion probably did him a lot of good and I think it’s important to recognize that he hasn’t done any drugs or drank alcohol in over 25 years. He completely turned his life around.

That said, when I was a kid of about five, my cousins came over and told me and my brothers that if we lay on the ground in our front yard and stare at the sky and say something like “I want jesus in my soul please jesus accept me as yours” that we would be able to literally feel the spirit of god infuse our bodies with his grace. We did it, my brothers said they felt something. I distinctly remember not feeling anything and for years and years and years I was tormented by this thought: why didn’t god want me? 

By the time I became a teenager I had a lot of emotional problems. I spent most of my life thinking that god didn’t want me and that i would never be good enough. I started attending church while the rest of my family never did. I used to ask my dads for rides to church but most sunday mornings he’d be drunk. I’d take the bus and sometimes miss a connection and arrive really late or miss the entire service. One day, I got there and the sermon was “If you can’t attend church regularly, why come?”

Damn. Again. “God” was telling me he didn’t want me.

It took a few more years before I realized that he didn’t not want me, he didn’t exist. The feeling my brothers and cousins claim to have felt (if they didn’t just lie like I did at the time) was an emotional reaction to a stimulus of ritual. Ritual, prayer, and meditation has a certain chemical reaction in our brains that eases anxiety, reduces tension, and even spurts off a bit of the happy juice that my brain naturally produces too little of. This is why people with OCD have repetitious ritual like compulsions (many of my best friends compulsions revolve around prayers of forgiveness for the most minor “sins” like wearing polyester or eating shrimp she doesn’t even believe in the bible to be literally true but her childhood upbringing has cemented these as grievances).

Art, for me, is ritualistic and seems to release the same or similar brain chemicals as religion does and I believe that all art is to some degree a spiritual act. There’s a theory in modern art about how we’re drawn to beauty and how it relates to plato’s theory that the emotional reaction we have to beauty is us responding to something that is divine in nature. Divinity is perfect, perfection is beautiful, anything beautiful is a glimpse of divine perfection. 

Yadda yadda yadda sorry this is entirely too long, the point I want to make is this:

Art seeks to connect humans through emotional stimulus. Religion seeks to connect humans through emotional stimulus. Art and religion are different vehicles towards the same end and can / should / do play off each other. That’s why people like ICP work so well and why J says things like “it came from god”. It’s not that there’s a divine being out there somewhere trying to push this message of connectedness, it’s that we’re a herd species and we want to pull our herd together because it releases those same chemicals. “God” and art and “love” are inherently connected because they’re all stand in’s for “my brain likes it.”

krunkazphuk said
All hail the god of procrastination. Do it. Do it now!

ehh, maybe later

now you got me interested and i got a question about that( @robtidwell ) is it only an issue when trying to read something? like if someone read it out loud you would instantly get the meaning and all is good?

nobody ever explains these things thoroughly it’s like it’s taboo to talk about and your supposed to know what it is. and if you ask a question they just tiptoe around it like their going to offend somebody. it’s really annoying cause i wan’t to know, some times i feel like i’m the only one who doesn’t cause every one acts like they know.