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Reddit mentions of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God
Sentiment score: 4
Reddit mentions: 7
We found 7 Reddit mentions of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Here are the top ones.
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Features:
Specs:
Color | White |
Height | 8 Inches |
Length | 5.2 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | November 2012 |
Weight | 0.77 Pounds |
Width | 0.98 Inches |
Today, I have a very special guest who is an expert on evangelical religion, psychotic pathology, and how it all relates to tulpas and plurality.
Tl;dr takeaways:
-Hearing voices isn’t always a problem.
-Tulpamancy may have profound benefits for one’s mental health and social life.
-Tulpamancy-like practices may be especially therapeutic for individuals with Schizophrenia.
-The stigma against plurality and hearing voices is unbased and should be removed.
Check out Professor T.M. Luhrmann and all of her research: http://luhrmann.net/
Check out my video on Luhrmann’s research and why we need to destigmatize plurality: https://youtu.be/lEPgaFaP6X0
Check out my video overviewing the research by myself and others on tulpamancy: https://youtu.be/cw0vCPNL5lU
Check out my video on why tulpamancy isn’t mental illness: https://youtu.be/Qp1an8XSkZc
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Studies mentioned:
Schizophrenic voices are made worse by a stigma attached to hearing voices: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26349837
Tulpamancy-like practices help schizophrenia: https://theamericanscholar.org/living-with-voices/#
Tulpamancy has a positive impact on mental health: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310460591_Tulpamancy_Transcending_the_Assumption_of_Singularity_in_the_Human_Mind?ev=prf_pub
Imaginary friends are beneficial and enhance empathy: http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~siegler/423-taylor07.pdf
Luhrmann’s research on Evangelical religion: https://www.amazon.com/When-God-Talks-Back-Understanding/dp/0307277275
If God is God, and he is supposed to have a relationship with you... wouldn't he offer some guidance? Wouldn't he talk back?
I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Talks-Back-Understanding/dp/0307277275
"When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God"
I have Issues that mean I can't read fiction without angst, so I read almost exclusively nonfiction. BUT I dogeared and underlined nearly every page of TM Luhrmann's When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, which looks from a critical yet compassionate anthropological point of view at what exactly is happening with people in the charismatic Vineyard church who claim to literally hear God's voice. Takeaway: they are consciously engaging in practices that systematically rewire their brains, perceptions and meaning-making mechanisms.
When God Talks Back has been linked here a bazillion times, many of them by us, but this is the strongest the parallel's ever been, other than maybe that atheist former preacher who said he could still talk to God today (Dan Barker?).
Must be a hell of a blow to the ego to come down from literally being God, though.
-Serk
How culture makes a difference for schizophrenic symptoms
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When God Talks Back by T. M. Luhrmann
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my blog
If it helps, "feeling God", "hearing the Holy Spirit", and similar claims that you hear a lot — particularly in Neo-pentecostal churches (but others as well) — are really dependent on factors like personality type. They rely on treating a portion of one's own thoughts and emotions as though they were the thoughts of another entity, and it takes both practice and innate aptitude. There's an interesting book on this by an anthropologist who studied these phenomena for several years at several Vineyard churches, called When God Talks Back. It includes a lot of stories from Christians who claim to constantly "hear God speak" as well as those who have found it difficult or impossible.
You're in a tough spot, because if you explain it to other people at your church, they'll probably assume it's due to some sort of spiritual flaw or sin on your part. Maybe nose around a bit and find someone who's in the same boat.
http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Talks-Back-Understanding/dp/0307277275
The Bellah book is by a sociologist and it goes through more of a history of religion. The book by Luhrmann is by an anthropologist who actually immerses herself in these religions and finds herself having these magical experiences. She puts forward an idea of why religious people have religious experiences, but she does it in a pretty gentle way - she experienced them herself. Here's a quote:
"In effect, people train the mind in such a way that they experience part of their mind as the presence of God. They learn to reinterpret the familiar experiences of their own minds and bodies as not being their own at all - but God's. They learn to identify some thoughts as God's voice, some images as God's suggestions, some sensations as God's touch or the response of his nearness."