How religious was Dylan?

I think this has been touched on before, but a while ago.

So most of us are skeptical of Culen's analysis on Eric and Dylan, but something I have been thinking about is when he calls Dylan religious and talks about his belief in God.

He seemed to be a bit of a Holiday religious person but he did go to church for a long time growing up.


I think Eric mentions God once when he talks about what is right and wrong. He doesn't see himself as a "God" until Dylan starts talking about being a God.

I assume his shirt had to do more with the KMFDM song than the Wrath of God, but really that was what Dylan felt like he was doing. Playing God and destroying everything with his anger.

He felt guilty about masturbating and porno. His meditation place almost seemed like "heaven"

We have the basement tape leak where Dylan was mocking Rachel and Jen calling them "ungrateful, godly, little whores." then he asked what he would do? By then Dylan was seeing himself as superior and "godlike"

So that of course makes me think if they ended up in jail, how would they feel about the woman who would probably send them love letters and the such... Dylan was so far gone and thinking of his Halcyon girl and being "pure" for her, I imagine he wouldn't feel comfortable with that attention.

I don't think he was religious at all really. Like you said, holiday religious maybe. He probably really went to church because he was dragged there or to please his parents. I don't think Dylan had any connection to religion at all. I think Cullen is reading too much into what Dylan wrote in his journals.

I think being "godlike" was his way of saying he wanted to feel superior. Being God meant he was better than everyone that bullied him. It was a way to rise above them. Shooting up the school and killing people would make him "God". He was above everyone. They feared him. It gave him a sense of superiority or he thought it would. That's why he referred to himself as "godlike" when talking about NBK especially. And, I do think his shirt was a KMFDM reference/way of saying he felt immense anger.

Feeling guilty about porn is a whole different thing, in my opinion. I don't think that had anything to do with religion. He was so obsessed with this "Halcyon Girl" that he felt like he was taking away from her by watching/masturbating to porn. He felt a sense of guilt over it. For whatever reason, he felt like he was betraying his girl by watching porn and looking at other women. Now the fetish thing, I chalk that up to him being embarrassed by his own fetishes. That's why he tried to suppress them.

Religious as in the traditional way? No, not a chance. Dylan's beliefs were a sort of New Age mystical stuff. He believed in an afterlife, and had puritanical views of being spiritually pure, but didn't believe in a higher power. This was because he believed he was the higher power in question.

QuestionMark wrote:

Religious as in the traditional way? No, not a chance. Dylan's beliefs were a sort of New Age mystical stuff. He believed in an afterlife, and had puritanical views of being spiritually pure, but didn't believe in a higher power. This was because he believed he was the higher power in question.

I have to agree with both of you. I sometimes think you can go two ways when you start feeling like you are too different and the depression is kicking in and any other issues he was having kind of take over. You can either go with you’re right I am awful I am below everyone or you could start saying I am completely above you that is why I am different because I am better and that’s the route he took. He called himself an Einstein in an ants body.

Part of what I find hypocritical about Cullen's analysis of Dylan as "profoundly religious" is this contradiction you mention about Dylan convincing himself he was a god. And I agree, this is what he did. He turned his self-hatred outward and convinced himself it was everyone else's fault that he felt like such an outsider.

Cullen focuses on Dylan's writings about good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, purification/ cleansing, and a search for truth. Yet he virtually ignores the countless times Dylan speaks of being godlike, of being better than everyone, of existing above the "brainless zombies". I'm not religious but even I know that comparing yourself to God is sacrilege. Profoundly religious people just don't do that.

QuestionMark wrote:

Religious as in the traditional way? No, not a chance. Dylan's beliefs were a sort of New Age mystical stuff. He believed in an afterlife, and had puritanical views of being spiritually pure, but didn't believe in a higher power. This was because he believed he was the higher power in question.

I'd agree. His beliefs were sort of spiritual and new agey. He didn't have the beliefs of any traditional religion.

He may have viewed his happy place as "heaven" from his church days. That may have carried over to his beliefs as he writes them in his journal. Maybe he simply just liked the way any sort of heaven was explained in church. It might have been something that stuck with him.

Not sure this belongs here but I didn't think it deserved its own thread. Just thought it was eye opening and wanted to share.

I was reading about how some of the religious leaders sort of used Columbine to "pad" their flocks and scare people into thinking that Columbine is what happens when you don't go to church, and came across this article:

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Basically, it says that people kill people because they don't believe in God (in this case a Christian God, but I'm sure any would apply) and because evolution is taught in school and is poisoning young minds.

Because no one ever murdered over religion before...