The Null Device

Dancing With The Gods -- An eye-opening essay by Eric Raymond (of The Cathedral and the Bazaar fame) about religion, metaphysics, spirituality and skepticism.

Rituals are programs written in the symbolic language of the unconscious mind. Religions are program libraries that share critical subroutines. And the Gods represent subystems in the wetware being programmed. All humans have potential access to pretty much the same major gods because our wetware design is 99% shared.

Only...that cold and mechanistic a way of thinking about the Gods simply will not work when you want to evoke one.

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