Or we could just acknowledge that they are documents that evolved over thousands of years and aren't totally self-consistent as a result.

The fundamental catalyst of finding God is recognizing that you yourself are a sinner. To sin means to miss the mark. For someone NOT to be a sinner means being 100% perfect in every single infinitesimal action and thought you have every taken or had in your life from birth to death. To hold a belief that you are a non-sinner is frankly moronic and dishonest.

That is certainly true as well. It is important to realize these are historical documents written by real people. They are divinely inspired but are imperfect by the very nature of original sin

Also important to note that the testaments are Testaments. E.g. the New Testament was NOT written by Jesus himself, but followers of Him that have provided their testimony.

I see no reason to assume any divine intent.

To connect with the Divine is not simple or something that you can do of your own will. I can attest that the Bible is most certainly divinely inspired. To understand you need to have your own personal revelation of the divine itself, which most people nowadays equate to spirituality.

Psychoactive drugs are well known to aid people in connecting with the spirit realm so to speak. Revelations obtained while you are "high" are retained when you are sober. This is why Shamans of all cultures incorporate these drugs in their societies.

Trust me bro, I got really high and spoke to god.

As somebody with a basic science education I expect better from you

It's only people with rigorous scientific educations that can understand it.

It's consensus in the scientific discipline of psychology that people have natural psychological defense mechanisms.

Psychedelics inhibit your own psychological defense mechanisms that prevent one from considering other perspectives. Your brain is naturally on "tunnel vision", in a sense, for your own survival. It is this lowering of your own inhibitions that allows one to consider something they may not have.

As a chemist you may know the story of Kekule and how he discovered the structure of benzene while high on ether.

Dismissing this as "I got high and spoke to God bro" is blatant ignorance of how these drugs function in the first place, which has been well-studied in the biological sciences yet our understanding is still very incomplete due to the black-box nature of the brain that we cannot probe with conventional techniques.

This post was edited by El1te on Apr 29 2023 11:27pm

Most people who have spiritual revelations on psychedelics are not educated enough to relate it to Christianity or religion in general, so they call themselves "spiritual". This is very common in modern Western culture nowadays.