09-29-2021, 06:55 AM
This is a great roundup of the situation.
I like to equate faux-mysticism with superstition, in the sense that what we do in the physical domain has a direct effect in the spiritual domain. You can see this thread all the way back to the ANE pagans, with their methods of appeasing the gods, through gnosticism, Chinese and up to the modern era, with humanism, trans-humanism, holographic universe theory, etc. Heck, we can see it in microscopic form when we look at children's games--"step on a crack, break your mother's back" is a silly ritual but it assumes that there's a spiritual connection between the two events. It's certainly not physical.
It's all different ways to bring the supernatural down to the physical, so that either everything in existence is physical, or the supernatural exists and is beholden to the physical. The Bible says we don't have control over the spiritual; we just go with the flow. There is most likely some kind of miniscule (miniscule, according to the grand picture) choice or participation in those matters, but it's at the individual level, and it's different for everyone.
I like to equate faux-mysticism with superstition, in the sense that what we do in the physical domain has a direct effect in the spiritual domain. You can see this thread all the way back to the ANE pagans, with their methods of appeasing the gods, through gnosticism, Chinese and up to the modern era, with humanism, trans-humanism, holographic universe theory, etc. Heck, we can see it in microscopic form when we look at children's games--"step on a crack, break your mother's back" is a silly ritual but it assumes that there's a spiritual connection between the two events. It's certainly not physical.
It's all different ways to bring the supernatural down to the physical, so that either everything in existence is physical, or the supernatural exists and is beholden to the physical. The Bible says we don't have control over the spiritual; we just go with the flow. There is most likely some kind of miniscule (miniscule, according to the grand picture) choice or participation in those matters, but it's at the individual level, and it's different for everyone.