Thread: [Video] Lucid Dreaming is The DEVIL?! (Not Really)

Originally Posted by sloth

And is that the accepted definition of evil? Surely the term existed before Satan. Obviously the term was made up by humans, just like "table", "life", "truth", and "know". Why does the word hold such strong connotation? What would make something "evil"?

Look up at the title of the thread - this is about people telling people that lucid dreaming is the work of the devil. Not just evil but Evil (pronounced the way Dr Evil does it).

** Edit:

Ok, it seems Mr. Sloth is looking for a more philosophical answer. I'll crack open my calcified thought process that resulted in the above answer and look at it again..

Of course the idea of evil existed before Christianity - but then, did anything human exist before religion? Or at least before the suprestitious dread that marked the earliest glimmerings of what came to be religion. It was because we feared the thunder and the earthquakes and volcanoes and marvelled at natural beauty and hoped fervently that the sun would come up again each time it went down that we felt the need to try to explain these phenomenae in some way that would allow us some measure of control over them, and the earliest answers we came up with were superstitions, giving way later to religions and eventually to the scientific method. When you think of that progression alongside human evolution, it seems clear to me that among our very first conscious glimmerings were superstitious dreads that demanded appeasing and propitiation. The idea of evil was with us from the beginning, always associated with superstition or religion.

For my part, and I've heard the same sentiments expressed by other liberal-minded atheists - the very terms Good and Evil pervert moral thinking and should be abolished. What the religious or conservative call Evil I try to classify more accurately as terrible decisions and actions made by people for selfish reasons often under the influence of some type of personality disorder or psychosis.

So by this reasoning, the act of lucid dreaming itself is not evil (selfish behavior that hurts others for personal gain) - however telling others that lucid dreaming is evil because you believe they should unquestioningly follow conventional beliefs without exploring the potentials of your own mind IS. Or to be more accurate, maybe not selfish behavior exactly, but it is a strict and unthinking knee-jerk reaction by the close-minded to maintain the staus quo and frighten people into following tradition. These injunctions against mental freedom always seem to come from the religious or the conservative.